


it was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem (i heard my heart break)

by aimingforoblivion



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, i stayed up until six am two nights in a row to finish this, it's hanahaki folks, minor description of injuries, my first time posting so bear with me if this is shit, pretend this was posted in 2020, sorry for this, this will probably be restricted soon..maybe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 28,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28476252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aimingforoblivion/pseuds/aimingforoblivion
Summary: gavin loves many things, but only one is killing him(this was written before october of 2020, authors note is the first chapter)
Relationships: Gavin Free/Ryan Haywood
Kudos: 8





	1. Author's Note

**Author's Note:**

> like mentioned in the desc, the authors note is the first chapter. also, first time posting to ao3 so i hope i dont fuck anything up

Hello. Hi. Um, I’m not exactly sure how to start this, for many reasons, _some_ more than others, so I’m just going to simply state how everything is organized, so you can avoid certain things for trigger reasons, or basically for convenience sake. It’s been a bit of time since everything’s happened, and I think it’s settled down enough to post this, since I wanted to do so before the end of the year. (Looks at the clock reading 3:45 AM on New Year's Day: clearly that ship has sailed and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Sigh.) That aside, I do encourage you to read the entire note if you don’t mind hearing _another_ opinion on the _SituationTM,_ and anything regarding Ryan Haywood. I will condense his name to RH for the remainder of this note, and everything is ordered into the categories as follows: Intro, Story Behind the Fic, Publication of the Fic, My Reaction/Opinion/Statement, and Moving Forward.

Intro.

Before I get into the finer details, I would like to give you an introduction on how I got into AH, because I believe it is relevant, given that this is the first fic I’m publishing for the fandom. Like many, I got into AH through Gavin and the Slow Mo Guys, me specifically when the Smarties Prank video against Trevor appeared in the suggested window next to a SMG video I was watching, and that was that. I started _kind of_ watching their content around maybe...early 2017, but I didn’t even watch Let’s Plays, only Between the Games’, Shenanigans’, and their old Prop Hunt videos. After that, I began slowly watching their other content on and off when the other youtubers I watched slowed down for a bit, like the rest of their GMod stuff, along with DBD and GTA. Since I was rather late to the scene, instead of going back through and watching their old content, I watched a lot of Gavin compilations, and eventually, basically every Team Love and/n’ Stuff comp or related video I could find, once I got into the pair of them. Originally, I only watched AH for Gavin, but eventually RH grew on me because I liked his on-camera personality, and just generally his POV in games. Obviously from then on, it went to me enjoying how he interacted with Gavin and vice versa, and eventually me finding out about the shipping part of the AH fandom, and, well, the rest is history. Ao3 became my home for the next few months, and basically I read the Freewood tag from back to front, and over again. And that brings us to.. _almost_ here.

Story Behind the Fic.

This fic was a product of a few things, so I’m going to try to list them as succinctly as possible. Firstly, since I was pretty late to the fandom, there were _a lot_ of au’s available to bounce off of when I “joined”, unlike back in 2013-15, when really, the only fics that people produced were office fics. I was never part of the fandom back then, and when I read through the Freewood tag and came across these fics, I kinda got nostalgic for a time and place I had never experienced, and my first idea was to make an office fic and recreate that feeling, but then I realized that it was kind of weird to ship people in a _“realistic”_ setting, when I really only did so in au’s like GTA, Kings, or Skyfactory/Gods, etc. Then, I came across a fic that featured Hanahaki, and this sparked a _huge_ wave of inspiration for me, because I remembered the lore behind the disease, and BAM, I had my idea, and obviously, for it to work, it had to be written in the office setting. I was a little skeptical, but I shoved down my hesitation and powered through. I knew that in the heart of it, this is an RPF— _Fiction_ , being the last heading—and therefore, it was by no means a depiction of who they are in real life or anything along the lines of that, just premade characters who I was puppeting along a line of plot, based off of how they appeared on-screen. That’s all, and I’d like you to remember that if you choose to read the fic.

Publication of the Fic.

This portion of the Authors Note relates to my thoughts _after_ the incident, so if this is any way uncomfortable for you, please feel free to move on, however I do find that it does have a pretty high level of importance. That being said, immediately upon hearing of the _news_ , I wasn’t really even worried about AH’s content, it was really, for me, fics and _my fics_ , the ones that I had worked so hard on….and still hadn’t posted. I don’t have many fandoms that I’m in, so losing one that I had just begun to enjoy the most so harshly was terrifying. Thankfully, to whoever said that The Witcher was a Freewood Monster-hunting au and introduced me to that fandom, I will be forever in their debt because due to them, I was able to transfer most of my fic plots and outlines over to that fandom, _however_ , there was still one outstanding fic that could not be refurbished in any way. 

This one. 

I went through hell and back debating whether or not to post it at all, then whether or not to post it anonymously, or to post it and orphan it, or to post it and restrict it. I wanted, mainly, to post it to say that I accomplished it, and because, frankly, I'm kind of proud of it, even if looking at RH’s full name kinda makes me sick because of the reminder it gives. I intitially didnt want to post this because of fear of backlash and what people might think of someone _actively_ still posting work featuring him, but after seeing fics like Wisteria and the Murder Selfie series still being updated due to the time and effort the authors put into them, I was honestly inspired by their strength and levelheadedness to post this, even in the wake of what he has done, and with so many people blacklisting his name. _However_ , then came the secondary hesitation because I didn’t know how to feel about posting a ship, wherein the one half, in real life, clearly would probably never want to be associated with the other person anymore in any sense of the word. whalehuntingboyfriends has removed their fics for this very reason— _mainly_ ,—and I wholeheartedly respect, support, understand their decision, and it really threw me for a loop because my fic hits so close to home. It's not an au, _theoretically; given that it features hanahaki_ , but it's not fahc or kings, it is a basic, generic rpf involving my own interpretations of the people I was watching on screen and shipping in a reality-inspired fictional setting. I knew it probably would do more harm than good after what happened, but now with the rumour (fact?)—don’t quote me on this—that AH is moving offices when they return, I feel a little safer knowing that they’re beginning with a clean slate. So really, moving forward, I decided to publish this because I wanted to accomplish posting a fic for the first time since...oh god, my HTTYD days on Wattpad, so it was for me, mostly an official, ‘ _look, I did this_.’ 

My Reaction/Opinion/Statement.

This part of the note features the _SituationTM_ and RH heavily, so if you’d like to skip it, again, feel free.

First off, I’d like to say that I do not condone RH’s actions, and like many, I do not forgive what he has done. That being said, my reaction after my initial shock and disgust was really, _honestly_ , to mourn, despite the fact that he probably doesn’t deserve that. I had just lost a source of entertainment, and frankly, a huge source of creativity, and his actions had just tainted both a community and thousands of hours of work by everyone who had ever done fanworks to actual work with him. But then again, that feeling was shared by many, not just me.

However, I, myself, do have different opinions and views moving forward because of this: I was, for lack of a better word, a _ghost_ , in this fandom. I rarely liked (as in, thumbed up) their videos on yt, never commented on a single one, don’t have a _first_ account, posted none of the art I started, none of the fics I started, read fics as a guest, never subbed to him on twitch, gave him bits or commented or _anything_. I was, like I said, a ghost. I was just _there_ , but nobody ever knew I was because I never made myself present. I had no connection (as in like, sending them things or whatever) to any of the AH members, and I still don’t, and in a way, I am thankful I never did for this very reason. Being so _disconnected_ from him has definitely made this a lot easier on me than it has on others, and that will for sure reflect in my later statement, as you will see. That being said, I am still hurt, sad, and it _still_ affects me, even 3 months later, despite the small part that AH has had in my life in the grand scheme of things. It’s the little things that hurt, like the tiny part of you that remembers tuesdays and thursdays as his streaming nights when you’re bored doing homework with nothing to watch, or that the gavin annoyance device 2 will never get made, or that you’ll never be able to go back and watch or read old stuff without feeling a little _guilty_ for enjoying it, hearing a song that you used to associate with him or his characters, or even just watching their new content, and although we now know what he did when he was there, feeling like a voice or a feeling is missing. Jeremy couldn’t have said it more maturely himself, _that it felt like losing a family member_. He didn’t express any anger or resentment publicly to spur people on, rather he expressed the hurt and sadness, and I think that’s a good seguey for my next point. 

For what I think of RH, my first thing to say is that I am not angry at him. I _am_ angry at the repercussions of his actions and the fact that he didn’t think to consider them—especially the work of other people he’s ruined—and I am also angry at _myself_ for not hustling my ass and posting this before everything happened so it could’ve provided the joy I initially wanted, but alas, I’m not going to put anger and emotion towards a person who’s actions my feelings will have no capacity to change or alter. It's both fruitless, and a waste of my time. However, what I _am_ , is disappointed in him. I feel like it is a little harsh for me to say he flat-out betrayed us, (and you may feel differently, and I respect that) but I instead, feel that he has **let us down _._** He had obligations, a base level of trust, and more as an influencer and content creator, and he failed to uphold his end of the deal. Ergo, let us down. I’ve run this discussion over and over to myself for the past two months, and I’ve come to my conclusion, even if it might clash with yours. Example being, that _I_ may not see him entirely as a monster, but I believe that Jack had every right to call him such. (I kind of explain this further in another parenthesis)

Given my lack of connections, I am able to separate the art from the artist, and although it’s a little cringy to watch content with RH in it—with what he has done lingering in the back of my head—I can still make it through basically everything given the fact that he isn’t alone, and therefore is not the only point of interest or person contributing to the video’s humour and watchability. Totally on a side note, I have seen people screaming at compilation makers for including clips featuring him, and honestly, I want to tell them to give it a rest. Accept the fact that he was in the video, contributed to it, _who he is_ or not, and don’t actively go seeking out new videos that may feature him, just to yell at the channel user for the fact that they included him in it. He shouldn’t be the reason people can’t enjoy the rest of the AH members in past videos; he was there, you can’t change that, move on. ( _Obviously_ , if it's uncomfortable for you to watch videos with him in it, that is _totally_ understandable, just don’t condemn those that can or do. In terms of AH themselves, I’m aware they want to delete content heavily involving him, and although _I_ and many others in the community don’t see his past appearances as a problem, they’re the ones that lost a friend, and have had years of jokes and legacy tainted, so I understand why they’d want to do it. It may not hurt us that much to still hear a joke about Edgar or Still In The Air or anything like that, but for them, it’s a reminder of significant hurt and loss. You may be feeling something one way, but it is always important to consider how someone else may view it; and although you may feel differently, it doesn’t make their view any less relevant, unless it is unnecessary or harmful.)

Tangenting off of that point, I want to agree with a bunch of commenters on a RH-less compilation I found, who were disagreeing with another comment that said something along the lines of; there is nothing missing with his departure, weakest link, etc. Despite what he did, most of the replies disagreed with the initial comment, stating stuff like his brand of humor is sorely missed in videos, along with the fact that as an entertainer, he was first class. I entirely agree with them, as the first and only reason RH became one of my top two AH members was because of how he appeared in videos. (Obviously, if you weren’t initially fond of RH to begin with, then you can clearly disagree with me here.) I can say that I am happy that he is gone now, given that we know what he did when he was _there_ , but with full honesty, I _will_ miss him in content—no point in lying. _Though_ , despite his prominence, RH did not _make_ AH what it is, and he certainly was not the only source of entertainment there. They all are hilarious and wonderfully talented in their own way, and like I said, although I will miss RH as an entertainer and his on-screen dynamic, his absence certainly will not stop me from watching all of the other talented people that make up the rest of the crew, and it, realistically, shouldn’t stop you either. Change is unliked, but good, eventually. It’ll take time, so don't expect yourself or others to get over it within a certain window. 

Moving on from videos, I think, realistically, that RH was not a mask. I’ve seen many people say that the _Mad King_ or the _Vagabond_ was the real him, and RH was the character, but honestly, that’s kind of unrealistic. I don’t think someone would have the capability to uphold that kind of facade for this many years without it conveying some truth. I’d also like to believe that he did not come into RT with the intention to do this, nor was it a thought of his until the opportunity presented itself. Someone commented on Meg’s tweet, saying something about him getting caught up in the cool air. I, myself, think that was the case. However, it’s not something I want to dissect, so think whatever you like. I’ve never interacted with the guy inside work or out, so I will never be able to know what he was like, but going off of the information we have, I’d like to believe that he wasn’t the immoral person that has been brought to light all along. 

Anyways, moving on from that, I also can’t deny that I believe he is a good father. I think he adores his kids, and is a great dad to them. I—and really, nobody except for him—can speak or hypothesize the relationship he had with his wife, but I definitely believe, underneath this aspect of his personality that has tainted the man we thought we knew, that he still is a good father. Many people also _looked up_ to him as a father figure, and a person they aspired to be, and I don’t think they were _wrong_ in seeing him as such, that being, minus some of his _decisions_. He’s a talented and smart individual, _**logically** speaking_, and there was many pieces of evidence throughout his videos at RT to support that. As a _content creator_ and _entertainer_ , his gusto and presence will be missed, however, as a trusting _employee_ and _person_ , I think it's safe to say we are better off without him. 

Lastly, I’m definitely disgusted by what he did, and I’m not going to go into details, but I will say that people are tending to forget that he is not the _only_ one that did this, and that he also isn't the first (ever; I’m not just referring to AH and RT) to do this and he definitely won’t be the last. Grooming wouldn’t have a definition in the dictionary if it hadn’t been done already before, and it wouldn’t have been a violation of conduct, if the company didn't know that stuff like this happened, and would need rules against. I’m not saying that it was _bound_ to happen, or we should _expect_ it, but it’s definitely not _unheard_ of. It doesn’t make this situation any _lighter_ , or gives us a reason to kick it under the fridge like ice, but I’ve definitely seen some aspects of it blown out of proportion, like death threats to him and his family and the doxxing, and I don’t exactly think those are deserved. Let him serve his sentence, but just have some levelheadedness about you and deal with this like a respectful person. 

All of that being said, I’d like to conclude by saying that despite the giant pessimist that I am, I wish RH _better._ I don’t forgive him, or hope he gets away from this scat free with sunshine and rainbows in his future, or whatever, but I hope now that he has been severely punished for his actions, that he can truly see the magnitude and the depth of the hurt he’s caused, that perhaps he can learn to be a better person.

Moving Forward.

Wow. Okay, that was a lot. Anyways, lastly I’d like to conclude with where I’m going from here. I have slowly moved away from AH and stuff recently, but I definitely find myself watching videos here and there, and clicking on clips people are starting to post again. Despite not being _that_ active in the community side of AH, I definitely want to contribute a few more times to the fandom side of AH, given the backlog of inspiration I had for fics before the incident. All of my Freewood fics have basically been transferred over to The Witcher fandom, so if you’re interested in reading content that is literally Freewood’s dynamic in a different universe, I highly recommend it. I came into the fandom from nothing, and I still find it entertaining despite the fact that I haven't played the games nor read the books (though I want to!!). 

Three big fics that I refurbished are: The Enemy of My Enemy (which was fahc), Not Yet Corpses. Still, We Rot. (immortal/fahc au where gav was midas and where ryan didn't remember who he is), and lastly, Home is Nowhere, Therefore You/We Met at the End of the World *can't choose a title lol* (was a last of us au). They have all been reworked for the Witcher, so if you’re interested, feel free to stick around to look out for them.

THAT BEING SAID, I do have two more fics for this fandom that I have in the works, however they are gen, and will only revolve, really, around Gavin. The first is a spinoff of NYCSWR, and is _just_ the Gavin version of the Midas fic, mixed with the rest of the crew, minus RH. The other one will be a basic interpretation of how I picture fahc Gavin, and that's basically it. 

There will be a couple more witcher fics aside from the refurbished, (which are basically new fics now given the fact that ive almost rewritten half of them because of detail shifting, but whatever.) I’m a sloth when it comes to writing though, plus school is a bitch, so don’t expect much stuff for a bit, depending how lazy I am. 

SO. I hope you—maybe not _enjoy_ —but just take this for what it is, I guess? And I hope this fic doesn’t deal you any harm or spark ill intent. I ask you to please not argue in the comments, as we’ve all been hurt enough as it is, and we all are entitled to our own reactions in the wake of RH’s heinous acts, as long as you don’t agree with him or defend him. Thank you for reading, maybe, I guess, _sure_ , and I thank you for your support in advance. I have a bit more sap at the end of the fic, but I’ll leave it here I guess. 

Thank you for reading, and take care <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this in google docs and used a script editor, so if italics, bolds or paragraphs are messed up that i missed, i apologize

The first time he realizes what’s happening, it's storming outside the office. They have no windows, of course, but the maelstrom rain pounds on the roof, echoing through the rafters and bouncing off whatever tiles they have left to call a ceiling. 

Thunder cracks overhead and everyone loudly hopes that it will pass quickly so that they can get to recording today’s definitely-needed TTT. They usually can run through a storm just fine, but this one seems particularly adamant on making itself louder _just_ to give them trouble, with the added benefit of random flickers here and there and the risk of running a brownout.

The storm is not a metaphor for his emotions though— Gavin’s not angry, or thunderous in any matter, if anything, he’s accepting. Perhaps a little disbelieving, but mainly accepting. It made sense. The storm wasn’t a metaphor; it was irony. 

Because of course the office, the company, Rooster Teeth itself, happened to be the perfect environment for a storm like this to brew: The close atmosphere, the everyday interaction, the conversation—both for videos and the stuff in between—the continuity of it, the familiarity, the relationships, friends, and in a few others’ cases, more than friends. 

So yes, it is ironic that the storm outside happened to reflect the storm that had been festering for years in this place— however, this storm didn’t involve rain or cracks of lightning, no; this storm was one of longing and inevitable fate, a burning, _blossoming_ end that bestowed itself upon the one who cast the clouds over themselves. 

Enough with the analogies. Gavin was no wordsmith, (you could say that again) he was just finding this all deliriously ironic. 

That _of course_ Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter were the perfect place where the weather kicked up seeds and planted them in your lungs— of _fucking course_ , leave it to the one and only Gavin Free to fall in love with not just the job of his dreams, but to hopelessly inflict himself with love for a damn coworker. 

However, he was not mad, nor angry or even melancholic over finding out. It had been years in the making— had to have been what with how the disease manifested itself, so really, all he felt was a sordid sense of acceptance and a curt disappointment in himself. 

Because, really, he didn’t exactly think that it would go on for this long; kinda thought that the simple crush would burn itself out, and the inevitable storm clouds looming overhead, poised to rain down, would silently pass over and minge away. But, leave it to his luck that they just kept building up, each longing glance or simple admirative thought just accumulating condensation in the form of _want_ into the clouds. 

A crack of thunder sounded, more distant now, thankfully, and Gavin coughed again, more visible proof of this storm he brewed stuck to the sleeve of his hoodie, where he had coughed into his elbow. He brushed it off before Micheal, who sat next to him fiddling with his Switch saw it, and made sure to trap it under his shoe and slowly grind the thing into the office’s lost cause carpet.

He still accepted it, though, because really, he had always known it was there. The idea of it constantly lingering in the back of his mind, or rather, in the back of his throat, because ever since the guy joined their dysfunctional yet functional group of “gamers” back in 2013, eight whole years ago, Gavin knew he was going to—and had—fallen head over converse-clad heels for Ryan Haywood. 

But now the dryness at the back of his throat was not just an idea, when he now had just mushed the living proof of it under his shoe and into carpet under his desk. 

The living proof that Ryan did not love him back. 

⁑

He still accepted it though, because the disease was a funny thing, that.

Hanahaki, the name the Japanese scientists dubbed the disease, was extremely rare and, actually, inflicted very little people. At first, when studies first released the causes of the symptoms, everyone who had a mingeing crush feared for their damn lives. But it wasn’t just a case of unrequited love, no. The actual disease was more complicated than that, taking years to make itself known, not unlike puberty in nature, with how it slowly rested dormant in the brain until, eventually, it was triggered.

It required years of constant, well, feelings. Longing, pining, hurt, crushing, whatever one wanted to call it, to feed some gland akin to a cancerous tumor in the brain, which, after manifesting for years—growing as your unrequited love grew—would eventually reach a peak where it began sending neurological signals to the lungs, where it began its trademark garden. It started microscopically at first, in your alveoli, until it grew and grew, causing the patient to cough in effort to create more space in their infested lungs.

Everyone and their brother knew of the “cures”, or, more realistically: the two ways to end it. 

Option one was simple: die.

Let it run its course. Which meant: let the roots puncture your chest organs slowly, let the flowers steal the surface area in your lungs, accept the vines crawling up your throat; threatening to force open your epiglottis so you’ll starve. That is, if your lungs had not collapsed and strangled themselves before then. 

The second option was a little more complicated, but you got to live out of it which was bloody great, but somehow it was the lesser desired of the options. The process that went into curing the disease was similar to chemotherapy, wherein drugs were developed to stave off the “tumor” that grew rapidly with the progression of the unreciprocated feelings, and in doing so, halting the neurological signals that kept the flowers growing. Without being fed these signals, the flowers would wither and die. However, such treatment came with a price, an undesirable tradeoff that not many were willing to part with: the removal of the disease removed all memories of the person the one was inflicted with unrequited feelings for. Simple enough, but when this person is someone’s everything, best friend, partner in crime, most would rather die than forget the person that hung the stars in the sky for them. 

And hell, okay, there _was_ another cure, but this was not any “Disney Bullshit” to satirically quote the man Gavin was literally _dying_ for, so really, there was no chance at the third option even manifesting itself, especially after eight whole years. Ryan didn’t love Gavin back, and although Gavin didn’t expect him too, it was obvious he never would.

⁑

But despite it, Gavin accepted it.

However, he did _not_ accept the dying part.

Okay, and before anyone was to call him heartless for not wanting to die for Ryan, because he absolutely, hands down, would eat bloody _fucking_ wet bread for him—Christ and if the _thought_ didn’t have him gag—so that discussion was over.

But the problem is, Gavin loves other things too.

Maybe he does not _long_ for them, because he already _has_ them, but Gavin loves them nonetheless. He loves his family, Dan, loves the Slow Mo Guys, the channel’s fans— who got him to his dream job at Rooster Teeth, which he loves. He loves his ~~coworkers~~ _friends_ , the fans, the community;

He loves everything that _brought_ him to meet—to love—Ryan. 

And he cannot do that to them. Can’t just— _die_ because he deemed one more worth dying for than the rest of them. He does not want to _leave_ , does not want to _go_ , does not want to lose his dream because of love— love he would choose. every. damn. time. but it was still love, and so long as he could persevere the punishment of falling for someone he would never _deserve_ , he had no plan on dying. Had no plan on hurting everyone else he cared about, because although platonically, he loved them too. 

He would not want to die for anyone else, though, if he had the choice. Because, yes, despite not wanting to die, Ryan Haywood _was_ worth dying for. 

⁑

Every member of Achievement Hunter was oblivious.

Not a difficult observation to make— queue the videos of Jeremy being taped to the wall or the Tab war between Jeremy (again) and Trevor, to name a few, and really, when Gavin was making a conscious decision to hide his predicament, at all costs, it was safe to say that they would never notice unless he outright told them.

Even more so, because it was mid-spring in Austin, and allergies spread afoot masked the initial symptoms of Gavin’s illness. However, when the coughing began to get worse, the office _did_ seem to question their resident brit if he was sure it was just allergies that were affecting him. He shrugged it off nonchalantly, although he playfully sulked, saying that his famous ‘I’m not doin’ it’ method when it came to warding off sickness had finally failed him.

They all chuckled along and told him not to get them sick. 

⁑

Gavin was sitting on the couch, Macbook in his lap, when he decided he should probably look into it.

He was editing an intro for a video on his second channel, which was simple enough that he didn’t need to be stuck at his desk to do it. He put down the tea that he had been drinking in an attempt to soothe his itchy throat, and minimized his editor, opening the browser and plainly just searching: _hanahaki_. 

He got all the information he already knew, but as he scrolled he began to find stories, news articles, all highlighting the act of martyrdom the inflicted felt responsible to partake in for the one they loved, because they didn’t want to lose what was _theirs._ Could not bear to forget every living memory tied to that person, and on top of that, lest the inflictor of their Hanahaki put two and two together and discover that so and so had fallen hopelessly in love with them when they did not feel the same themself. 

But, Gavin was lucky.

Okay, sure, he tripped over his own two feet, botched things up from time to time, but he was bloody lucky. Basically every interaction he had ever had with Ryan was online, every story, joke, their team name— hell, even stuff outside of the Let’s Plays were on the internet; when they started uploading Between the Games’ and Shenanigans’, and they had Off Topic too, convention clips from the fans, and everything in between.

Gavin was lucky.

He could come back to work after recovery—after binging all the videos he could to replenish his memory—and act as if everything had returned to some sort of normal.

Because Gavin was _lucky_.

Lucky he could come back to interacting with and, likely, fall in love with him and inflict himself all over again. Lucky that he would be able to rediscover everything all over again, although the idea of it was bittersweet.

But alas, he was bloody lucky the office was a set of oblivious fools, amazing fools who were his friends, but still fools.

⁑

However, despite how true that was, Ryan liked to believe that he was one of the more observant people in the office.

He was the first to notice when they had taped Jeremy to the wall behind the throne, and had called out Micheal during that one Let’s Roll because of how the acoustics of a hat had altered the projection of his voice. So, really, he wasn’t as totally oblivious as, say, Geoff, who neglected to notice Jeremy until he literally threw a stool, and mind you, that was _after_ he was holding a conversation with several people _and_ blasted Bring Me to Life on his phone. 

Although, Ryan didn’t think _anybody_ missed how Gavin came into work on Monday. 

No stranger to problems sleeping, Ryan noticed how unbelievably _tired_ the lad’s eyes were when he trudged through the door and all but plopped into his chair, someone from RT or an Uber seemingly having dropped him off due to the fact that the rest of the Achievement Hunters were already scattered throughout the office. Gavin startled Micheal, who was turned to face Jeremy and chatting about some strange, stupid idea they had for the next Between the Games involving their even stupider old men masks. 

Ryan, who was checking out the stuff they had unwrapped during an extremely quick AHWU, (where he was pointedly unpresent like he usually tried to be) watched Micheal spin around when Jeremy stopped talking as well, and faced his other friend. 

“Hey Gav,” he started softly, knowing almost immediately that his boi wasn’t playing around, and actually looked like shit. They’d all seen Gavin come back to the office after hours of flying, late nights editing Slow Mo Guys, and the like, and enjoyed it when he came into work even if— because the brit genuinely enjoyed it there and could relax despite the chaotic environment. “You good?” 

“Yeah, boi,” Ryan—out of the corner of his eye as he’s surfing through the piles of unwrapped shit—watches as Gavin lifts his head from where it had been resting in his arms that were unceremoniously folded over his keyboard, “bloody mingeing cold just didn’t let me get any sleep.” 

Ryan frowns at the words, the dark rings around Gavin’s eyes, he notices, are not unlike his own that he sported during his college days, and even sometimes still today. Getting no sleep sucked normally, and only made it worse tenfold when it was due to an illness that _needed_ rest to right itself, so Gavin definitely looked worse for wear. 

But, the two lads chatted lightly with him, asking if Gavin wanted to ask Trevor if he could take the day, but the brit politely refused, struggling to hold back a cough as he said he’d already had the weekend. Jack, being himself, tried to coax Gavin into going home anyways, even offering to drive him and easily hand his own spot in the Let’s Watch they were doing today to Alfredo, but Gavin shook his head again and told him that it would get better throughout the day. 

His voice was a little shitty, so he opted out of the Minecraft they had to record, and planned on answering a few tweets and comments in the meantime instead. 

Ryan eventually took the throwing knives Jack and Fredo had unboxed for him back to his desk, resting them on the cup because the damn thing had filled up a while ago, and as he was sitting down, could not help but _continue_ to notice Gavin, almost falling asleep at his desk with his head resting on the palm of his hand. Ryan pinned the noticing down to the fact that Gavin was so unlike his normal, hyper self, his exhaustion almost making he, himself feel bad. 

Everyone told Ryan he was the dad of the office, despite Micheal and Geoff being the only ones having children of their own, but he guessed he could see why he held that aura from time to time. Sure, he definitely had his moments of _insane_ , but as a general rule, he tried to keep things around the office at a professional level, cleaned up most of the garbage and messes, was practically always sober (along with Geoff, now) due to his aversion towards alcohol, was a bit (or more than a bit) of a nerd, and generally found himself rounding up the rest of the AH members during games like a parent corralling their rowdy kids. And for a second, Ryan could see why he had been dubbed that title from time to time, as watching Gavin, he almost wished they were back in the old office with his couch and the _Lovely Ryan_ as his desk. Because, really, Gavin looked like he needed that couch—the current one was a mess, covered in AHWU shit and merch they needed to show off—and Ryan, to be honest, wouldn’t have minded trading places with him if they were back there. 

⁑

It did actually get better during the day, like Gavin had said, which was great.

Micheal suggested the two of them record a Play Pals because it was something easy to do, and if it wasn’t good, they could always record another one later and it wouldn’t totally flunk an entire recording with the crew.

The two came back to the office in a fit of giggles and snickers, which, aside from the hacking cough the brit sported afterwards, was basically back to normal— which the entire office was glad for. They recorded a new TTT, which this time they definitely didn’t need, but who really cared, and later went to try something in GTA, but it horribly failed and so they scrapped the recording. They collectively called a late lunch break, which _was_ definitely needed because they had been too absorbed in their games earlier to actually have one. 

Ryan, though, ever the observant; just watched Gavin pop the tab on a canned drink of his own in lieu of eating, and started messing around in Minecraft on his own little world, and when Micheal rolled his chair over—munching on something Lindsay handed him—asking what his friend was doing, Gavin replied with saying he was trying something out he had thought up during the failed GTA. Micheal watched his friend fart around in the world for a bit before he got up to throw out his garbage. 

Gavin coughed into the sleeve of one of his never ending supplies of AH merch, and Ryan watched as he kicked his chair into a backwards roll, almost crashing into Fiona as she came into the office, and retrieved the garbage bin, dragging it next to his desk. 

Ryan, now curious by whatever his coworker had an idea for, walked over from where he had grabbed a Diet Coke from the fridge not on his side of the room (he had depleted that stash already) and walked up behind Gavin’s chair.

“What did you say you were messin’ around with?” He queried, taking a drink as he watched the brit cock his head up to look at Ryan behind him, hands stalled over the keys and mouse. 

“Well, we keep doin’ those like, attack defense kinda things in GTA and I kinda wondered if we could create something like it in Minecraft.” 

“Oh, wow, that’s actually a cool idea— would you mind if I hopped on?” Ryan found himself asking, already having some ideas surrounding horses and perhaps boats? But he’d just ask Gavin to see what he had in mind. 

“Really?” He exclaimed, almost as if he was surprised, followed by an affirmative, “Top, yeah, sure.” 

“Yeah,” He returned with a smile, “I don’t think I’m in the last recording today, and I’ve got nothing else to do, so.” 

This time, however, as Ryan rounded the office back to his own desk, his observance didn’t happen to pick up on how Gavin’s radiant smile had him curling in on himself in guilt, and as Gavin rounded his chest cavity, Ryan missed the way that he gasped, and proceeded to cough up a bloodied scrap of budding plant material into the garbage bin. 

⁑

Hiding his predicament from the office, Dan, and everyone else was fairly easy. However, hiding it from himself tended to be a bit more of a struggle. 

At home he was a mess, accepting, but a mess, not unlike his unruly hair that never seemed to tame. He was constantly at war— whether it was fighting against the disease, fighting against his undeniable feelings, or fighting against his options, Gavin was waging a battle against his own mind and body. The symptoms were inevitable, but his immune system fruitlessly launched futile attacks to try and rid his system of it, which rendered him feeling weak, tired, and drained, and he coughed constantly to try and displace and dislodge the growing foliage in his bronchioles. 

He didn’t cough up flowers or even petals right away, though. After the initial flower that had informed him of his disease was uprooted and coughed up, it continued on, beginning with seeds, small sprouts, a growing root, the flimsy stem of an emerging plant, or little buds of leaves that threatened to unfold.

The first time he coughed up the real evidence of his ailment since the initial petals a few weeks ago, it was back at the office again.

They were recording a new Hitman, as Jeremy pointed out that morning that the developers had released a new escalation. _They_ consisted of Jeremy, Ryan and himself, the go-to crew for the game that decided they hadn’t recorded one as a trio for a while. 

Ryan was playing, turning the second round of the escalation into a bloodbath as he dragged what looked like his thirtieth body into the pile at the corner of the room. He and Jeremy were laughing in feigned surprise—because, c’mon, what else would you bloody expect out of Ryan—while the man himself just smirked all the while going about his mission.

Gavin’s laugh, which was usually translated into squeals and bird-like noises, quickly morphed into a cough, and he was almost reflex-fast in how he rolled his chair out of frame and away from the guys, and thrusted his mic at Jeremy so he didn’t have to hack up his lungs into the audience’s ears.

“Jesus Gavin, that _cough_!” Jeremy exclaimed, wide-eyed and partially worried, at the same time that Ryan turned his head away from the monitor to ask his familiar, “Y’alright, Gav?”

He nodded, not trusting his voice, and reached to grab his water from the desk. He tongued the leaf— _petal?_ that had flew up his trachea and stuck itself to his palate. He ran around the other side of the room, a little wobbly at first, before spitting the damned thing into the bin. He flung a kleenex overtop of it just in case, and returned to his seat, answering Jeremy’s confused look with, “phlegm,” before sipping his water again.

If he was pointedly quiet for the rest of the game and made a conscious effort not to look at Ryan one bit, he just blamed it on wanting to study the round so he could finish the escalation as quickly as possible and go home. 

⁑

So, yes, hiding this from his coworkers and friends was almost stupidly easy, however, the fans were little sleuths, they, and funny enough, almost every sixth comment was a theory on Gavin’s cough. Mainly due to Jeremy’s _reaction_ in the Hitman video, as they could only pick up the cough from a mic two to three feet away. 

Gavin always found fans strangely amazing for things like that. Not so much with the Slow Mo Guys, but with Achievement Hunter, the viewers seemed to pick up on things that completely went unnoticed to the rest of them at the office. They remembered moments from _years_ back, stuff that by now half the office forgot about or just didn’t recall. 

But _Christ_ , were they ever observant.

The Hitman video was littered with comments regarding their theories of Gavin’s illness. Many actually just wished him well and that he would feel better, while others postulated whether Gavin had caught something, was facing allergies, or was plagued with something worse. They only had three or four recent videos with his cough present in them, but they stretched their ideas nonetheless, and a few people actually nailed the mark, hypothesizing that Gavin, infact, was suffering from Hanahaki. The replies to those comments were a mix of equal parts doubt and debate over whom he was inflicted for, and, predictably, the majority of their bets were on Micheal. 

It made sense, though, Gavin wouldn’t deny. He and Micheal were best friends, and fans had fictionally shipped them for years: difference was; they semi-played along. (He says semi because half the time it’s just them being them.) Gave the fans what they wanted from time to time— making suggestive comments, simple gestures for each other, tweeting yearly on their friendship anniversary, and recently, Micheal had even gone as far to get a tattoo in tribute of Team Nice Dynamite. 

Gavin easily saw why they would see it that way, and despite himself, smiled. Micheal was literally the perfect friend, and they hit it off immediately, but, both of them, despite being so close, knew they only ever had the desire to be the bestest of bestest of friends: a bromance, if you will. 

And fans had their theories, saying that Gavin was trying to hide it so that Micheal and Lindsay didn’t feel bad; trying to hide it so that nobody _pitied_ him for falling for his best friend.

But, really, they _were_ right. He _was_ trying to hide it so that nobody pitied him for falling for his best friend— one of his _other_ best friends.

Gavin was just glad his friends were, unlike the fans, oblivious.

Dan, however, was much like Gavin himself. 

Curious.

Which was probably why _they_ hit it off so well, come to think of it. His friend, although across the pond, was spontaneously, all of a sudden, getting tweets asking him if Gavin was okay and what was wrong. 

So, Gavin wasn’t surprised when his fellow Slow Mo Guy sent him a screenshot of his most recent tweet, that despite being from months ago, was now getting comments back and forth regarding Gavin’s cough appearing in his videos at Achievement Hunter. 

**B**

**Thursday** 7:36 PM

_B, what the bloody hell is happening?_

_crap, i didn’t even notice_

_i can explain, call?_

_Ya one sec_

Gavin patiently waited for Dan to give the _ok_ , and when his screen flooded with the familiar call prompt, he accepted and immediately apologized for the stress he’s likely unwillingly forced upon the man. 

Unlike he’d been doing with his Achievement Hunter-bound friends, Dan was something different. Dan was separate, something _unrelated_ to work, and would have no effect on what happened there, and really, had no room to judge Gavin when it came to anything regarding AH. 

So, instead of hiding his tracks and giving Dan some lousy excuse as to why he was being seen as borderline ‘dying’ by a multitude of the RT fanbase, he hesitantly, but thoroughly and truthfully gave Dan every full-blown detail about the situation. 

It was liberating, but also partially humiliating. 

He started with the very beginning, from when he first met Ryan and labelled it as a base level of simple attraction to personality, and then to when he just shrugged it off as someone new being added to their group, and Gavin being _Gavin_ : just being able to find a new person to learn about and prod at.

Soon, it was forgotten about when Ryan became a regular member of AH, and as the man began to come out of his shell and form a niche with the other members of the crew, not just the lanky british thing who was semi-terrified of him. 

Eventually, the longing glances and slightly more than admirative thoughts gave way to a terrifying realization, from where Gavin immediately smothered them and denied himself, almost to the point where he forgot about it for an entire two years. 

However, like a joke that refused to die, his stupid attraction resurfaced again at another point in time, and with so many instances where it could have happened, Gavin could not pinpoint the exact moment that had him realize he was _still_ pining for Ryan, even after all these years, because he swears at this point that everything the man has ever done in his presence can probably serve as a reason. 

He then mentions to Dan how he forgot about it for a while, focused on their channel together and posting more often on there as a fresh wave of popularity had them receive a surprising, but not strange or unwelcome spike of views and followers, and had him want to reward them by posting more in thanks. Then Geoff had taken his sabbatical, moved away from AH and taken up the mantle as creative director, and then that had given way to a few more regular cast members, plus the permanent addition of Fiona. 

Her presence had distracted Gavin from Ryan—another new person to prod at, just like he had with every new member before her—and then, right out of the blue, the _incident_ struck him out of nowhere that one spring day at the office. 

The _incident_ that proved that apparently, Gavin hadn’t nipped the attraction in the butt like he thought he had years ago. That proved that it didn’t get kicked under the fridge like a cube of ice, or smothered like a candle in the presence of a breeze, and was apparently still burning despite it all, coals still warm and embers hot. 

And, after a six-hour conversation that lasted well into the night, Gavin still didn’t know which feeling he preferred: the liberation or the humiliation. 

Because one felt deserved, while the other felt like something he should be guilty of feeling. 

⁑

Ryan didn’t know if Gavin knew that he—and perhaps the rest of the crew, but he couldn’t say—saw the comments as well.

It wasn’t just YouTube and the RT Site, because soon enough all platforms (including Tumblr, according to Jeremy) lit up with the now humongous fan-theory of Gavin with Hanahaki, despite no evidence besides a cough in a few videos. It was hard to ignore however, despite the fact that it was, evidently, a false theory, but Ryan couldn’t help but feel bad if the brit _was_ — that is, having to hide the fact that he was dying because of unrequited love, and nobody had the heart themselves to ask him.

Until one day, Micheal popped the question himself. 

They had finished a new, rather late recording about twenty minutes ago when Gavin came back into the office. He had just come back from the RT Podcast, and Micheal, Lindsay, and himself were the only ones left in the room when Gavin walked in. 

Ryan had his headphones on, waiting for a new game to download that he was going to test out tomorrow, but he just wanted to make sure it downloaded correctly before he left for the night. He appeared engrossed in watching the slow-moving progress bar to Micheal and the other two, so the lad deemed the conversation he clearly wanted to have with Gavin private enough— and besides, Ryan was sure Micheal knew that he wouldn’t share information that wasn’t his to anyways.

He was a decent guy.

So, what if there were no sounds playing despite his headphones being on, enabling him to listen in on what Micheal wanted to ask his boi? If they wanted him gone, Ryan would step out of the room with absolutely no complaints. 

“Hey Gav,” Micheal greeted, and Ryan could see the top of his head over the monitors as he stepped away from Lindsay and next to Gavin. 

“Whats’up?” he easily responded, although his voice was a little rough, assumably from the combination of his never-ending cold and the podcast. 

Ryan heard the lad in question breathe out a sigh, looking to Lindsay, and back at Gavin. “Look, can I ask you something?”

Gavin’s mop of hair nodded, letting his friend continue.

“It’s not your information to share, if you don’t want- to, obviously, and I’m not here to interrogate you, cuz that’s not what friends are for, but, well, I’m sure you’ve seen the comments floating around, and, I’veuh, gotten a few messages from fans myself, and—”

“You’re askin’ if I have that mingeing Hana-whatever bollocks it is and if I love you?”

Ryan raised his eyebrows at Gavin’s sudden, pretty blunt for him, interruption, but he went right back to focusing his eyes on the loading bar and running along it with his mouse pointer. He filed the tone of voice under Gavin’s exhaustion from the cold and the cold itself.

“Well, yeah.” Micheal confirmed, and Ryan’s heard him serious many times, but the guy almost sounded _scared_ , wounded maybe. Granted, Ryan supposed, asking if your best friend was dying because he loved you was a pretty frightening feat. 

“Of course I love you, boi; but only in the exact way that you love me.” He said confidently, chipper, and Ryan could actually _hear_ the reassuring smile, “Maybe in another life—sorry Linds—but nah, no need to get all worried or feel guilty Micool!” 

“You’re absolutely sure?” Lindsay asked, serious like her husband had been, but comforting as well, as he had also been.

“Yes. Definitely. I- I have an idea, well maybe, but I definitely wouldn’t keep something like that—the Hana-thingy that is—from you. And I’d probably be coughing up bloody flowers by now if I did, yeah?” 

“Yeah, of course,” Ryan heard Micheal say finally, and then, “thanks for telling me, and I’m sorry, I kinda put you on the spot there, Gav. I just, knew you were already sick and didn’t wanna make you feel worse, but like, I just had to make sure and-”

“-all good, boi.” Gavin smiled, cutting off Micheal’s nervous ramble, which, come to think of it, has to be one of the first he’s ever heard from the lad. The couple then proceeded to offer him a ride, which Gavin graciously accepted, mentioning that he’d text whoever was on the Podcast that would have otherwise driven him home that they didn’t need to anymore. 

The Joneses left the office and Gavin quickly spun around to grab his keys from his desk, peering over the monitors and spotting Ryan, briefly gesturing to get his attention. 

He slipped one side of his headphones off his ear, acknowledging the leaving brit, who waved and called, “cya Ryan,” with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. 

“Night Gavin,” he returned with a smile of his own, and _finally_ confirmed the install before shutting off his computer while saying, “feel better, ya?” 

“Yeah,” was the reply he got when Gavin opened the door to the office to exit, “i’ll try m’best.” 

⁑

Micheal and Linday chatted to him nonstop on the ride home.

Everything from joking about Gavin needing to get his license, to why the fans would assume Gavin had Hanahaki, what were his plans for the next Slow Mo Guys shoot, and then it eventually moved to the Jones’ two kids and how they were doing.

When they dropped him off at home, they repeated the same thing Ryan had said, and he silently wished, somehow, that their wishes could come true. 

He immediately reached for a teabag when he got inside, his throat a ratchet mess, and paused when he felt a fit coming on—they were getting more frequent and more painful as the months progressed—and he braced a hand on the counter as his throat and lungs convulsed. He dislodged _something_ , a painful tear somewhere deep in his chest cavity, and caught whatever he hoarked up in his mouth. He tasted a bit of copper, phlegm, and tongued at the velvety object as he pressed it against the back of his teeth.

Flicking it onto his tongue, he removed it with his fingers, and pulled it out, resting the bastard thing on the counter.

It was the start of a true flower, not just petals or mangey bits— but a bud with quarter-bloomed petals, and eyed it suspiciously. He coughed up the growing garden in his lungs daily, but the most of the remains got crushed, trashed, or stuffed into pant pockets in panicked haste rather than examined. 

There was a smear of blood on the base of it, probably where it had scratched him somewhere along the way, and the rest was moist with spit, so it was nothing pretty, and Gavin swiped it off the counter and binned it before one of his cats deemed it food. 

Said cats had followed him into the kitchen, probably wondering why their humanoid friend also was prone to coughing up hairballs continuously, and he abandoned his tea after the revelation, retreating into the living room to sit on the couch. They followed him, but were more interested in bathing on the carpet in the dying light of the Texas sun than accompanying Gavin. 

However, without having made himself that damn tea, his throat was left raw and dry, and soon enough he was thralled into another bout of coughing. This time, however, when the bud lands in his hands, for once, he’s angry— and isn’t that a strange thought, because this entire time he’s been nothing but accepting in regards to his fate, but now he’s angry. 

He’s angry that he’s allowed this to happen, and just plain old ~~tired~~ _exhausted_ of having to hide this. And he, not one to normally experience anger, doesn’t know what to do with it, and just sits and wallows in it instead as if it was cooling, dirty bath water until it dissipates and he just _sighs_ , closing the bud in a light fist, tension given way to more exhaustion. 

He can’t be angry, not at Ryan. Because it’s not Ryan’s fault. 

It’s _his._

Ryan’s at no fault for being just a genuinely good person. It’s no fault of Ryan’s for engaging in the stupid hypotheticals Gavin keeps conjuring up after all these years, while the rest of them are too surprised in Gavin’s strange imagination to answer. It’s not Ryan’s fault for being himself and making Gavin scared to invite him to a damn Let’s Play because he didn’t want to make a fool of himself or make a bad impression on his new coworker (soon to be friend).

But, of course, it’s still not Ryan’s fault for finding that funny and feeling bad himself when they brought it up in another Let’s Play a while after the fact. It’s never his fault when he indulges in whatever Gavin prompts of him at times, from downright obliterating bikers in GTA to kicking a maid into a pool in Hitman that, hands down, no doubt, would require them to restart the mission. 

It’s definitely not Ryan’s fault for being so strangely attractive, even more so now, (if that's even possible) with how he apparently is reverse aging according to Geoff and Micheal, and it’s definitely not his fault for being such a damn bloody nice person alongside it. 

Gavin is running out of time faster than the sand in the hourglass that he smashed on The Patch—and of course it was due to him throwing things at _Ryan_ —so he resolves to push the gent away.

Not anything drastic so that he or the other AH members will notice, but enough so that Ryan can still shine on his own without Gavin wanting all of his light for himself in the process.

⁑

Gavin stares at the stack of papers on his kitchen counter.

They got mailed to him yesterday from the hospital here in Austin, and, ‘ _from the_ luxury _of his own home’_ he could do a bit of the paperwork regarding the potential operation he was going to undergo. The information packet gave a thorough description of how the procedure would go, the recommended drugs and the medical alternatives for those with allergies, and a generous list of potential rehabilitation centres or checkup places to go after one was admitted, given the depth of their memory loss. Gavin however, mentally crossed those off his list given the fact that he had a pretty direct plan of remembering all that he could consume in the good two weeks that he took for his ‘recovery’. 

But there. 

That was the problem—because it wasn’t like he had told the office he had anything worthy of recovering _from_. 

Sure, they all winced when he coughed or gave each other pitying looks when he ran to the bathroom to hack up a Let’s Plays’ worth of flowers into the toilet, but to them it was not much more than a chronic cough brought on by God-knows-what. 

But, beating around the bush could only get him so far. He needed an _out_ when he would need to ask Geoff to drive him to the hospital—and although he could easily get an uber, he thinks Geoff would insist, but he decides he’ll take one back, given the circumstances, though—and would need a reason to give as to why he was getting a surgical procedure in the first place, all for a bad cough, and would definitely need something to placate anyone else asking.

He knew, theoretically, that he could tell Geoff and everyone else the night of the surgery, and when he came back—and they asked him whom he had had Hanahaki for—he could simply reply with the factual statement that the surgery removed that from his knowledge. However, it was almost cruel to do that to them. 

Almost more cruel than conjuring up an alibi. 

If he claimed to be inflicted with something other than what he was, then the blame could be felt and put upon nobody, and the fact that it would have been inevitable to contract rather than done so by his own hand, also removed the bloody part about this regarding the fact that this was _his own_ doing. His own _choice_. 

Falling for Ryan was _his own_ fault. 

So, to keep it clean and simple, Gavin researched every twatting illness in the book that he could that resembled closely enough to his symptoms—disregarding the mingeing flowers, duh—and that would be serious enough to require acute medical treatment to remove from his system. 

After hundreds of open tabs, a few documents here, and a good looking digital contender for the Pepe Sivila meme, Gavin finally had found the cloak for his Hanahaki: S.C.L.C. or, more commonly known as Small Cell Lung Cancer. His scapegoat.

It's a rather aggressive cancer, and the survival rate is under a whopping 30%, but if found early, the cancer can be eradicated quite well through radiation, chemo, and many other treatment methods—so uh, good news? Also, given the fact that it moves quickly and is susceptible to migrating, if he ever was to catch Hanahaki again in his attempts to reconfigure his memory via the internet, he had an out for that too. 

It was risky, and something not to be taking lightly to, whatsoever—but it was the best shot he had at leaving his own stupid heart out of this. 

He’s jolted out of his thoughts—the papers still unsigned—when he gets a text. He lazily pulls his phone out of his pocket and lifts it to his face, thumbing open the notification and his face morphs into a mix of a grimace and a relieved smile. 

**B**

**Tuesday** 9:47 PM

_Signed em yet?_

_no_

_You telling them?_

_no_

_Found an out, then?_

_yeah_

_Can I ask what?_

_sclc. fast moving, treats well at early stages, not something totally random_

_So, cancer then? Rough_

_well_

_I know, B, I know. And I wish I was there to help, but I can't and it bloody sucks._

_thanks B_

_Don’t thank me. Just. Just finish this and quit blaming yourself_

_i just feel like a shit bloody person_

_first i hide this from them, and now i’m lying. and i’ll continue lying_

_You don’t have to share this with them, B. You know that_

_it is about them though, b_

_one of them._

_one_

_and said one is the kindest man ever (apart from his crazy side) and if you were to ever share, he wouldn’t hesitate a second to understand and forgive u_

And wasn’t that exactly it?

Ryan would be _that_ person, without a doubt, but Gavin didn’t deserve that. Likewise, Ryan didn’t deserve to be loved by a coworker, a _friend_ —someone who should harbour no feelings past such lest they cock it all up, creating awkwardness and a quiet avoidance induced by a now-mutual discomfort. 

_its not his burden to bear_

_we talked abt this. and i won't be the one to hand him that burden_

_I know_

_Then just make your decision and find time to tell them when you do_

_I’m thinking i sign it off_

_Ur gonna do it?_

Was he? Was he really agreeing to erase the entire presence of Ryan Haywood from his memory?

_think so, yeah.._

He looked over at the forms on the counter.

Small Cell Lung Cancer.

Lies. Lies. _Liar_.

_I’ll give you time to decide. And quit blaming yourself, B._

But wasn’t that just quite the predicament, Gavin mused melancholically as he lethargically set his phone down next to him on the couch, where he had somehow migrated in the middle of texting Dan.

Because the only person _to_ _blame_ was himself. 

⁑

Geoff invites Gavin into his office on Tuesday. 

It’s been about four months since this whole debacle started (symptomatically), and now even not just AH is noticing the progression of his cough, but core and higher ups too. 

However, this is far from the first time Geoff has seen, or well, heard of Gavin like this, as he has joined the Achievement Hunters in a few GTA videos here and there— but Gavin has made a pointed effort not to be in the room when Geoff was. 

Gavin isn’t avoiding Geoff, or well, he kind of is, but what he means is he doesn’t hate him, or is even scared of him, but Geoff is practically his _father_ , and he knows that if he witnesses how bad Gavin has gotten, he’d probably lock the brit in his house until he got better.

Problem is, he doesn’t know how to break it to Geoff that he _won't_ get better. 

Fortunately, or unfortunately, though, he breaks _down_ instead. Which is strange, because Gavin hasn’t cried in a long time, like a can’t-even-remember long time, so it hits him by surprise and with a significant amount of force, but, like all tidal waves, it starts with a ripple.

“Heard you’ve been feeling pretty shitty, Buddy,” Geoff asks tentatively, and Gavin nods, anticipating this already, “how’re you holding up?” 

“ ‘ve been better,” is all he manages to say.

Geoff sighs, a sad look crossing his face and Gavin feels guilty knowing he’s the cause of it. “Then why are you here, Gavvers? Ease off for a week— _Fuck_ , God knows you probably need it with all the stuff you do.” 

“I know,” he hears himself sigh too, and apparently he starts crying because Geoff wipes his cheek with his bloody _sleeve_ , and, “but,”

“‘But’ what, Gav?” Geoff prompts, pulling his theoretical kid into a hug, and— Geoff won’t judge him, won’t pity Gavin, won’t make fun of him because he fucking let Gavin _live_ in his damn house when he had a bloody kid of his own already, and so Gavin isn’t afraid to unravel. If anything, it feels cathartic to finally let go of the tension and _tell_ somebody— 

“What’s wrong?” Geoff nudges again.

—to tell somebody the biggest _lie_ he’s ever told.

“SCLC.” He says quietly, into Geoff’s shoulder, afraid to say it louder because that might convey its falsity, and lets the cover story he’s been forming for weeks slip into reality, “Small Cell Lung-” 

“-Cancer,” and Geoff finishes the lie for him, now crying as well, and even as the vines pull taught and create a knot in his chest so tight he _aches_ , he knows in his heart that he would rather Geoff be crying over a lie than crying over his grave. Better to ask for forgiveness than permission, and all that. “I’m so sorry, Gav.”

“It’s fine, s’not your fault,” Gavin reassures, (and it's almost like he should be saying those words to Ryan, not Geoff) because it's the truth. He’s fine because he obviously _doesn’t_ have cancer, and it's also not Geoff’s fault— it’s _his_.

His own stupid, mingeing, moronic—

“Really, it’s fine Geoff,” he repeats, “it’s fast growing, but’ll respond well to chemo, so i’ll be top.” 

“And you kept this to yourself?” Geoff looks crushed and plagued with disbelief, and Gavin can only weakly nod, lest he spill the truth, the _truth_ that he’s hopelessly dying for Ryan Haywood but isn’t dying for him because he’s actually not going to die, but.

“But why—?” Geoff chokes out, and Gavin has to hold back a coughed sob, “We’re all here for you, Buddy.”

“Didn’t want anyone feelin’ sorry or bad.” He explains, because at least that’s true, in regards to one person, that is, “I’d just go n’ get treated, come back, and then everything’s back to normal.” 

“They deserve to know, they hate seeing you in pain, Gav— _I_ hate seeing you in pain.” And Gavin decides that’s _fair_ , given the fact that he’s irregularly coughing up blood nowadays, which, uh, definitely not pleasant; and he thinks the rest of AH realizes that too.

“I know, I just, I knew I’d be told to go home and rest, but, I don't wanna _go_ —” and he doesn’t. Despite the pain and the hiding and the struggle, Gavin wants to spend every last moment he can in the vicinity of Ryan, because _bollocks_ , he can’t push the lovable bastard away but he can avoid him, before he forgets everything about him.

Because he’s already decided.

He knows he’s going to get the stupid procedure because although he hates himself for it, because he’s only ever been stupidly _selfish_ —

But he doesn’t want to imagine Geoff, imagine anyone, for that matter, mourning him, not now at least. He just wants, really, for Ryan to be happy. He doesn’t need Ryan knowing Gavin is dying because he doesn’t feel the same way— because Gavin knows Ryan, _loves_ Ryan, and he just knows that the selfless, stupid guy would feel terrible and never forgive himself because he’s _that_ kind of person and Gavin _can’t_ do that to the guy. He doesn’t deserve it. 

Gavin doesn’t deserve _him_. 

And he’s dying because he’s _stupid_ , and he’s lying to Geoff because he’s _selfish._

⁑

He’s getting the procedure in three weeks and he _almost_ regrets waiting this long because the flowers are blooming and stabbing and he swears he feels them in the base of his throat when his exhales come out as a _wheeze_ —but he endures it because it’s almost like penance.

The punishment for falling for someone as untouchable as Ryan, for choosing to live rather than die because he’s _selfish_ , for choosing to lie to everyone rather than tell the truth.

Which, yes, he told them—the lie—like Geoff said he should, and they were all a mess of emotions that Gavin can’t bring himself to remember because he _lied_ and he’s _selfish._

And now he’s currently locked in the washroom coughing up a bloody greenhouse into the sink because he can’t fathom standing over a bog and there's blood trickling down his lip and the evidence of his pathetic longing is sitting, clogging up the sink. He’s still coughing, as he has been doing for the past almost five months, and he’s surprised he actually hasn’t just coughed up his entire lung at this point.

His breathing is alarmingly shallow, and he can barely make it through a Let’s Play without practically gasping for air by the end of it, and so, in a fruitless attempt to make more space in his lungs, he’s subject to cough at a brutally frequent pace, but he endures.

He endures because he’s come so far after making the decision not to die—despite the fact that he probably should after all he’s done.

⁑

Gavin comes back into the office with eyes red from exertion and tears and a smear of blood on his lip that he licks off as he sits down. 

Ryan watches as Jack reaches over the wall of monitors to pass Gavin a water bottle from the fridge on this side of the room, and he thanks him with a weak smile.

He, himself was up late last night streaming, time having flown by, especially when he was in VR, and all his chat seemed to talk about was Gavin. It was not strange to have his friends and coworkers mentioned in his chat, but it seemed once Gavin had told Twitter that there wasn’t going to be a new Slow Mo Guys video for a bit and likewise regarding his attendance in AH videos because of him being ‘sick’, it was the talk of all the community. He made sure to have negative or questioning comments filtered as usual, however, eventually people took it further and began to defend the brit as if he was their child, and Ryan could only smile fondly in the aftermath because he _was_ a child.

Not in the need of discipline or was child _ish_ , but Gavin had the heart of one: finding interest in the smallest things, was usually enraptured by anything adorable in games, had a brain that concocted ideas so fast that his mouth half the time just _gave up_ rather than attempting to _catch up_. He turned off his brain, as he said he did, when he came to work because he _could_ , allowed Jeremy to axe kick his desk because he _could_ , was afraid to ask Ryan to join a Let’s Play because he was _scared_ , and when Fiona joined he took her under his wing in a way, and budded a friendship with her like, again, a kid, making friends on a playground. 

But, beyond his AH exterior, Gavin was one of the smartest people Ryan’s ever met, which, really, he figures is why he engages in those crazy hypotheticals because after the initial _what the fuck Gavin_ , there is actually something pretty interesting he’s trying to get at. Well, besides the time he asked Ryan what it would be like if his balls were on the bellend of his dick, but besides. His contrast with work and his channel with Dan was always amazingly strange—however fairly separate he tended to keep the two—and although Ryan was, not to be cocky, kinda smart himself, it was always interesting to see how others’ brains worked. 

But right now, Achievement Hunter’s brit looked alot older than usual, his giddy, bright ball of chaotic sunshine demeanor he brought to the office overcast by his ailment. 

The dark circles Ryan could see through the gaps in the monitors a giveaway of his extended exhaustion over however how long it had been since he walked into the office that long Monday ago, and the redness in his eyes as a result from either crying or coughing or both, aged him despite being nowhere visibly older than he was yesterday.

He coughed and the office all winced inwardly with sympathy, and Ryan, being his observant self, didn’t miss how Gavin cringed and seemed to let his chair swallow him up, biting back his next cough with clamped-shut eyes and teeth piercing his lip. 

⁑

Gavin swore his slow motion videos moved faster than his last week at the office. 

There’s a string of sad tension in the room and there’s a suffocating tension in his lungs. The flowers have begun to fully blossom by now because he’s let this go on too long—eight _years too long_ —and he let it continue because he _wanted_ and he was _selfish._

So now, it’s Sunday night and he can’t sleep. He’s been coughing non-stop, a bloodstained, spit soaked, pitiful bouquet of botched flowers that he doesn’t even know the name of resting in the pit of the garbage bin he’s brought next to his bed, and he’s scared that if he sleeps tonight he’s not going to wake up, and then the paramedics are going to find him dead with flowers lodged in his throat and then everyone will _know_.

So, he can’t sleep, he decides, and resorts to scrolling mindlessly through Twitter, however, he gets tired of tweet after tweet wishing him better and that they love him but he doesn’t really believe them because how could they— he’s _selfish,_ and so he closes the app and dives down the YouTube rabbit hole instead.

It’s now four in the damn bloody morning when he’s finally made it through all the subscriptions he wanted to watch, and by now he’s just absentmindedly thumbing his finger down the home page. Next thing he knows, he’s watching some old podcast highlights, a few animated episodes, and auto-play soon finds him staring at a Team Nice Dynamite compilation made by a fan, and next up is one that jostles him out of his stupor. 

_‘Team “Gavin and Ryan,” Ryan!’_ His young voice filters through the speakers of his iPhone, and he vividly recalls it as the day that Ryan and himself came up with their team name. 

His initial statement invokes a question from the other, and Gavin listens as a younger voice of Ryan wonders aloud: _‘Do we have a team name?’_

_‘We do not have a team name.’_ He hears himself say definitively.

_‘No?’_ Ryan confirms, before deciding, _‘Have to work on that.’_

_‘Team Love and Stuff.’_ He remembers blurting out, unthinking.

_‘Yeah, yeah, don’t make it anything violent or hateful—’_ Micheal teasingly interjects.

_‘Team Love and Stuff..’_ Ryan parrots, as if testing the words on his tongue, _‘Love. And. Stuff.’_

There is a pause, deciding, then—

_‘—can I be the “Stuff”?’_

And that’s how Gavin finds himself at five am, one of his cats curled next to his foot while he watches another fan-made compilation, this time of his and Ryan’s continuous habits as a team. There’s a bunch of moments that make him snicker despite his downtrodden mood, a few suggestive comments that the rest of whoever was in the room at the time snicker at. But really, the more he watches, the worse he feels.

He sets the phone down on his bed, something regarding Ryan’s signature “Gavin, why?”s playing in the background as he hoists the bin up and onto the bed, knees hiked up around it and hands braced around the rim.

There is a decisive gag in the deep, back of his throat, and he launches into a gaelforce coughing fit, swearing he can _hear_ the stems snap where they’ve grown around his lungs, wrapped around his bronchi, and budded the flowers that have now crowded his chest cavity. 

He coughs up blood and flowers and regret and he grips the bin like a lifeline. 

_‘I just killed a biker for—’_

_‘Oh God, Ryan!— I just hit him again.’_ He thinks it’s Jeremy through the deafening rattling of his coughs. 

_‘That was for Gavin. The spirit of Gavin.’_

And Gavin coughs so hard he throws up the stem of a flower and it scrapes his throat the entire way up but he welcomes the punishment. His punishment for deciding to love Ryan, for deciding to _forget_ Ryan.

There’s the disgusting taste of copper on his lips but all he does is wipe it on the back of his hand and resume retching. 

There’s a different voice now, not the video anymore, and if Gavin had to give it a name it sounded an awful lot like _shame._ It’s reminding him that he brought this upon himself and that he should welcome something worse because he’s chosen to _forget_ his friend rather than _die_ for him and then it counters that previous statement by reminding him that if he dies then everyone knows and they can’t _know_ —

He coughs again, chasing the burn of blood and selfishness and a trace of hopelessness with a sip of water that definitely does everything _but_ soothe the serrated tissue of his trachea. Water doesn’t have a taste but Gavin decides it tastes like _regret._

Because he should just let it happen, let the disease serve him his sentence, but he doesn’t want to _die_ despite the fact that he _does_ and he is so confused and so lost and so in _love_ that he’s _dying_ but he doesn’t want to _die._

He loves Ryan but he loves everyone else in Achievement Hunter too and why should he have to _choose._ He knows it's because he wants something more than he already has because he's selfish and everything else he loves he _has_ but— but why can’t he just be happy with what he and Ryan bloody have? Why can’t he be content with a relationship like his and Micheal’s rather than wanting _more._

He knows it's because he’s selfish and he _wants_ and he _longs_ and he doesn’t want to die because he knows he will hurt others in the process so he wants to live for them too because he loves them _too._

He coughs another time as if to correct him by saying that he loves Ryan _more_ , but that’s besides the point because the war he’s waging between dying and forgetting has already been predetermined and he only feels regret.

Only feels regret when he stumbles out of bed and into the scalding shower because he’s got to get ready for work, where he’s going to have to avoid literally breaking down because he has to act like everything’s going to be fine when really, he won’t remember anything about one of them in a week. 

Gavin finds that blood tastes a lot like regret too. 

He decides not to eat breakfast because his throat is betraying him—for a justifiable reason he thinks, because he _accepts_ it—and attempts to make it look like he hasn’t been up all night, however unobservant his friends are, because the one thing they didn’t miss lately was how his exhaustion kept increasing exponentially. 

He almost debates just calling in a sick day and slumping back into bed, but he grabs his phone from his nightstand—where he’d left it to charge whilst he was showering—and texts Jeremy a confirmation that he is ready, and that drinks on the way are on him. 

At least there are _some_ things he can do right. 

⁑

It’s now Gavin’s last day at the office and August in Texas is downright _brutal_. 

It’s poised to storm—how _ironic—_ either late today or tomorrow, and the air is humid and thick and Gavin is now not only struggling with the heat but he also is struggling to breathe. He has grown accustomed to the stark contrast in weather between Austin and Britain by now, but, outside, sun glaring down on them in the parking lot, he doesn’t remember it ever being so unbearable.

Knowing the forecast and that it was Gavin’s ‘last’ day, Trevor pitched his idea, saying that since they attempted to beat the heat with water _boarding_ last year, why not try to make a video regarding water _warring_ instead. 

However, warring with water was not something Gavin’s lungs currently had the capacity to function for, so he immediately jumped on the opportunity to film the whole ordeal instead. In doing such, he decided he could end his last day on a hopefully _okay_ note, giving the fans some higher-quality video to watch from his Phantoms and other cameras like he did for the musical rather than whatever slow motion iPhone footage they could round up combined with the live-action shots from their office cameras.

So, Jack picked him up today, and helped Gavin lug his camera equipment into a good vantage point at the edge of the parking lot against the AH building, where they could run a few cords through their side door instead of trying their luck with any gammy outdoor plugs. They all concluded that the war would be Achievement Hunter versus the Support Room, and soon enough everyone had begun to pile their water weaponry into the hatch of someone’s pickup.

The humidity had his throat feel like it was lined with adhesive, and combined with the flowers that were subject to crawl up his trachea any day now, he was surprised he was able to draw in air at all, and was _so_ glad he decided to film rather than flail around the parking lot with a squirt gun because he would surely meet his demise on the scalding pavement. 

They had pulled over a picnic table with one of those umbrella fixtures for him, and he was glad that the shade contrasted enough with the sun that anyone trying to look at Gavin wouldn’t see him vomiting up flowers into his Phantom’s case. They also had pulled up a foldout table next to him, and thrown a few coolers and water bottles on it for anyone who wanted something to drink. 

By noon, everyone had arrived and each team was ready on their side of the parking lot with guns in hand. There also were kiddie pools donated both from those playing and the one from AHWU, and those were littered throughout the lot for those who needed refills. Cars were left as obstacles, although they did happen to obstruct some view of the playing field. 

Then, after a few okay’s and start-up calls, water was _everywhere_.

And despite the sun being responsible for the scorching heat in the first place, when it reflected off the streams of water flying across the battlefield it was quite pretty, and Gavin greedily captured the footage like a magpie collecting jewelry.

In his enjoyment, his element, it was almost easy to forget about the flowers in his lungs, the roots teasing through his blood vessels and reaching out to strangle his heart. When Micheal secretly unloaded a bin of water balloons that he and Lindsay had filled last night from the trunk of their own vehicle, dispersed them among the AH members to wreak havoc, and had water shimmering through the air—colliding with cars and reflecting rainbows in their mist—Gavin almost forgot the regret that had been setting into the very marrow of his bones if only for a moment. 

He was never completely alone though, people fluttered to and from the drinks table next to him every so often, Jack and Matt partook in a one v one closeup, and Fiona volunteered to be the subject of some more artsy shots for transitions. From then on, though, it was just him capturing footage of his friends soaking themselves with water guns in the middle of a parking lot. 

Bloody hell, and they called themselves _adults_. 

His enjoyment was, not surprisingly though, interrupted when a vicious coughing fit had him pass off watching his cameras to whoever was taking a drink for a second and stumbling through the door into the empty hallway next to the office and _literally_ falling to his knees, hands on the floor as he desperately tried to empty his airways. Something lodged itself in the back of his throat, and he growled to force it up, and violently fought against his impossible gag reflex as he stuck his fingers into his mouth to grab the flower. 

It was fully bloomed, like a few of his past had begun to be, and before he could take a second to fill his injured lungs, he was thralled back into another fit, unceremoniously spitting a mixture of blood, petals and globs of spit onto the floor. He retched from the effort he had been coughing with, and another bloomed head rolled off his tongue and into the pile. 

He stayed on all fours as he caught his breath, shallow, quick intakes of air that sent burning sensations all the way into the deep cavities of his chest, and there it was again, the _regret._

However, knowing he had to hurry it up somewhat, he eventually sat back onto his heels, taking in a few more shaky, painful breaths, before grimacing at the mess at his feet. He quickly stood up, ignoring the nausea he felt at the rush of standing up so fast, and kicked open the door to the office, grabbing a bunch of tissues from a box on their shelving unit and went about cleaning up his mess, scooping up the evidence of his hopeless crush and depositing the wet, bloody petals of _longing_ and _regret_ into the bin before covering it with even more tissues, and finalized it by grabbing a few extra to wipe the remnants from the hallway floor.

Shaking it off with a quick clearing of his abused throat, he stepped back out into the blinding light of the sun and slumped back onto the bench, gathering himself quickly before downing the rest of the water bottle that sat at the base of his tripod. 

The war still waged on, everything a blur of water and people and shouting that Gavin just shot what he deemed looked cool, and occasionally could see when one of the teams was planning something utterly stupid, and was able to grab a slowmo shot of it. Everyone laughed when at one point, Matt decided to perform a more—of what he deemed— _efficient_ way of cooling off, and full on just sat himself down in one of the refill pools. He splashed around like a baby duck for show, that was, until he began shooting at anyone who came to fill up, scolding them for trying to take his water. 

But, of course, despite all the fun, leave it to his luck to stab him in the back—or in the lungs, he supposes—and have Ryan Haywood himself hand off his gun to Alfredo to dual wield, and jog his way over to the bench Gavin was on, flipping open one of the coolers on the table and grabbing a Diet Coke, popping the tab, and taking a long, greedy drink.

Gavin made a pointed effort not to admire the column of Ryan’s throat as he swallowed so that his own wasn’t suddenly chock full of flowers. 

He swears he feels two literally _unfurling_ in his chest at that thought, but he just keeps his eyes and his thoughts to himself, as he tries not to remind himself how the guy’s shirt is soaked and clinging to his torso and how the sun has his blue eyes threaten to rival the sky itself and how Gavin can sense his eyes watching him toy with the focus on his camera now that Ryan’s finished with saitiating his thirst. 

“How’re ya holding up?”

Ryan’s voice has Gavin jump, startled from his thoughts, and the bastard _giggles_ when he notices and apologizes with a smile. Gavin’s heart aches, or maybe that’s his lungs collapsing, but either way, he’s enraptured, and just barely manages a weak,

“Top- _ish,_ ” before reminding himself to unclench the trigger for his footage lest he literally break it, and welcomes the sensation of digging his blunt nails into his palms instead. 

“Well, that’s good, at least,” he assures over the screaming ‘ _adults_ ’ in the parking lot in front of them, before continuing, “Jeremy said it’s too bad you weren’t out there, said he wanted to put you on his shoulders to use as a periscope because he couldn’t see over the top of that van over there—” and he points to a tan minivan as Gavin pictures it, letting out one of his prolonged snorts at the image of it, “—but hey, at least the video won't be just one of us running around huffing and puffing into the mic of the AHWU camera or a phone chasing everyone around tryna get footage.” 

“Christ,” Gavin forces out, struggling not to sound winded, “imagine? That would’ve been bloody terrible, absolutely mingeing—so, I don’t mind this actually.” 

“No?” Ryan poses, taking a quick sip of his pop before gesturing towards the entirety of Gavin’s camera setup, “Looks like quite the hassle.”

“Nah,” he confirms, “it’s pretty simple actually, once you get used to it, although Dan seems to say otherwise despite seeing me use them for _years_ , but it’s only really the relationship between—” and he immediately loses his train of thought, mind doing one of those, _wait wot?_ ’s, so he eventually just gives up trying to go all Slow Mo Guys while at the office, and concludes smoothly with, “—well, _yknow_.” 

He gives a wild gesticulation with his hands towards his setup, and Ryan just raises a brow.

“I mean, _sure_ , whatever you say genius,” Ryan teases, “so, I need to remove the logic part of my brain to do camera stuff, is that it? Because if anything, I’m already worse off at talking properly than you, so I’m halfway there, right?”

“ _Right_?” Ryan repeats provokingly and chuckles, and Gavin thinks it’s cute and he tries to take back the thought immediately because that's _not_ what he should be observing about his _friend_.

“Rig-oh-hey!” He squawks, brain catching up, and he’s not insulted in the slightest, “Ryan, that’s just rude, Ryan!” 

“Was it?” His insulter smirks, the cheeky bastard, and when Gavin laughs he joins in. 

“Why’arnt you out there, Ry?” Gavin finds himself asking, the nickname slipping off his tongue.

“Well, one” he begins to list, “I was parched, two: I wanted to sit down for a sec, and three: thought you looked a little lonely after Fiona joined in so I thought I’d kill three birds with one stone.” 

Gavin’s heart swelled, and he almost coughed up the flower that was definitely reverse peristalsis-ing up his throat, “Aw, don’t waste your time bloody sitting here with me!” And Gavin resides on saying that because really, he doesn’t know if he wants Ryan to stay or to leave. “I got my cameras to keep me company.”

“So you consider inanimate objects your friends now, Gav? You’re strange.”

“Me?” Gavin counters, “You put a bloody cow in a hole— _you’re_ strange!” 

“Hey! That was _years_ ago, I’m a changed man,” but Gavin _looks_ at him, and he caves, (like he always does, but Gavin doesn’t know that) agreeing, “I guess you raise a fair point.” 

And with that, Gavin hums smugly, before turning to the side to cough as gently as possible into his elbow. 

⁑

“Hey! You two—” Geoff hollars, because it's _always_ Geoff, even when it’s _never_ Geoff, (especially when it comes to Gmod). “Quit sucking each other’s dicks and get back to work!” 

Ryan laughs at him, putting his hands up in mock-surrender and almost pushes himself off the bench, deeming his break over, until—

Until Gavin sputters, likely from laughing at what Geoff said as well, but it quickly morphs into another of his vicious coughing fits and within an _instant_ he’s trying to scramble away from Ryan as if he was fire, and okay, he would deem it all well and good—think Gavin was trying to be polite, even—but Ryan feels horrible, watching his friend simultaneously try to bolt and hoarsely cough up a lung at the same time, so.

So, he stands and moves over towards Gavin, making sure to be mindful of the cords at his feet, and slowly pushes the brit back into a sitting position. Gavin seems to accept the help, and lets Ryan push his small shoulders back so he can open his airways more.

He keeps coughing and Ryan pivots to grab another water bottle from the table for when Gavin’s fit is done. He hears the game pause momentarily—the squeak of plastic triggers doused in water seizing—likely due to hearing Gavin’s cough. But, Ryan figures, once they saw him sitting the brit down, they were reassured that he’d be fine.

Ryan sits himself down now, Gavin pausing to take a few shallow breaths through his nose and teeth before starting up again, and he doesn’t know what to do, feeling helpless sitting _right next_ to him, and so, slowly—not to startle Gavin whilst he’s coughing his lungs up his throat—he rests a hand in the middle of Gavin’s back, rubbing in a small circle before holding it still, trying his best in some way or another to be comforting, as really, its possibly the _only_ thing he can do other than rush him to the hospital because _God_ that cough has gotten so much worse. 

It seems like the lad coughs for an eternity, but eventually he slows to a rough, shallow clearing of his throat, his lips closed either because he’s trying to suppress the noise or because he had coughed up spit or phlegm. He inches away from Gavin, giving him space to breathe, removing his hand from the others’ back. 

Ryan turns away momentarily to grab the previously obtained bottle, and when doing so, he doesn’t happen to notice Gavin’s split second frantic look-around and quick raising of his hand to his mouth again, peeling off the flowers and their scraps that had stuck to his tongue with saliva and blood, not even bothering to attempt to finangle them into his pocket and instead just hastily shoves them between his thigh and the bench, hidden under his leg. 

Ryan turns back and hands Gavin the water bottle, who takes it in a slightly shaky hand before giving him a wane smile. 

“Tha—” and Ryan hears his raw voice crack, and Gavin clears his throat and tries again, “Sorry, thanks.” 

Ryan frowns, not sure what to say because he didn’t really _do_ anything per se, but just offers Gavin a smile back with an, “anytime.” 

“You good over there, Gav?!” Jeremy shouts as he jogs by, Micheal and a few others also pausing behind their cover and turning heads to read the brit’s answer. Ryan finds himself turning his head away from the parking lot to observe his friend’s reaction as well.

“Yeah!” He calls back to the lad, water not having done much justice to remove the sandpaper sound from his normally smooth voice, “just a lil ratchety in the ol’ throatie.”

Jeremy whips his head back and gives an understanding frown, and Ryan finds he can’t help his own features from mirroring it.

His attention is quickly interrupted, as Gavin moves in his peripheral and Ryan sees him fiddling with his cameras again, slowly positioning the lens to capture more of the opposing side, where Micheal has just hoisted either Trevor or Alfredo - Ryan can’t tell which with the glare from the sun - onto his back and is running around a car, his human-turret going ape-shit with the water guns while Micheal holds onto them and laughs so loud that it echoes off the sides of the buildings. 

Gavin, next to him, laughs to himself as he zooms in on the shot, his Phantom already set up and he quickly grabs a slow motion clip of the chaos ensuing. Ryan did mention he lingered at the bench earlier because he thought Gavin did look a little lonely, filming on his own, but Ryan can definitely see how fun watching from the sidelines actually can be. 

⁑

And, like some deja-vu kinda shit, Ryan once again finds himself observing. Popping the tab on another can of Diet Coke, leaning back against the table of the picnic, well, _table_ , and just. 

Watching. 

He knows that nobody’s called him out on it once Gavin coughed, but although he is doing nothing, he supposes he is keeping the brit company—but. 

Unless he wanted to be alone?

Gavin never seemed to ever verbally or in any way physically show any discomfort or repulsion around him, so he figured, really, if the brit wanted him gone he would easily grab his gun back from Alfredo and join in. 

Gavin coughed a few more times, however not enough to spark any fits or anything, so, at least they weren’t anything over-concerning. His focus was centered around his cameras and the game, every once and while shifting his concern to his Phantom, snorting at the expense of his soaked friends as he captured them flailing about the asphalt. He swung his head ever so often—usually after something particularly funny—and beamed at Ryan, lightly laughing to preserve his throat.

There was a point where he’d been invested in watching the game, and only noticed Gavin when he was trying to hand Ryan his water-bottle, which, okay?

“Isn’t the bin beside-” and he was abruptly cut off as the—now apparently uncapped—bottle was thrusted upwards in Gavin’s grip and his lower face and neck were doused in the rest of the water in it. 

Once his surprise quickly wore off, his face split into a grin, Gavin’s squeaking filling his ears.

“You _little—”_ He chuckled whilst desperately trying to hone his classic Mad King threatening lilt, but he eventually just broke out into a fit of giggles with the brit, not even feeling a single urge to retaliate. He’d get Gavin back another time.

For now, he just let himself be the cause of the brit’s happiness; and as observant as he was when it came to other people, the small inch of pride he felt in that, to him, in that instant, didn’t feel like anything too important. 

⁑

Of course, eventually, the reserves of water ran out, and so did their energy.

So, it was collectively agreed that a truce be declared, and that they’d determine a winner so the audience wasn’t left ripping their heads off over deciding it a tie—despite the fact that they were _Achievement Hunter_ , and hadn’t even thought of any way to decipher a winner in the first place. 

However, since it was just water and plastic props, the cleanup went reasonably quick. Ryan had since gotten up from the picnic table and joined in, helping pick up all—or most—of the broken pieces of Micheal and Lindsay’s surprise water balloons. They were practically everywhere, given the insurmountable number of surfaces that the damn things could have splattered against. Most were littered throughout the pavement, while other chunks had plastered themselves to the sides of vehicles, under them, and basically any other surface they could latch onto. 

When he arrived back at the garbage bins near the picnic table, Gavin had since vacated the premises, he and Jack off to store his equipment away in his vehicle to bring home later. There _was_ , however, something left on the bench, and Ryan wondered as he got closer if Gavin had forgotten something. At first, realistically, it just looked like another chunk of water balloon, but once he emptied the pile from his hands into the bin to inspect it, it was—

It was _flowers_?

Well, one, and then bits and pieces of one or a few more. To be specific.

Feeling a bit like a lunatic, Ryan bent over to look at them: partially damp, given the fact that they were pressed against the bench, and were laced in fading traces of—was that _blood?_

Almost instantly, snapshots of fan comments, Micheal’s question in the office, Gavin’s _cough_ , played over in Ryan’s mind, and he almost staggered back at the thought. Okay. Perhaps he was overreacting, jumping to conclusions, like maybe someone was playing a _cruel joke_ , or.

Or, yknow, their coworker, best friend, _Gavin,_ had Hanahaki and had tried to hide it? _Fuck,_ Ryan had no idea. So, like any totally, _definitely_ normal person, he picked them up, pried open his back pocket so he didn’t ruin them, and placed them in the denim pouch. It felt strange walking back into the office, but he masked his discomfort easily, sauntering back to his desk and pulling out his phone. The lads were currently pelting Matt’s desk with moonballs, Geoff and Trevor were over by the door looking at something on their phones, and others were somewhere Ryan, a little selfishly, didn’t care where. 

He fidgeted like an impatient child, continuously thumbing his phone on and off despite the fact that it was terrible for the buttons in the first place—but his screen was shattered, so, _really_ , what more damage could he do?

He itched to look into the finer details of what he found, but he decided that he’d save that for the privacy of his own home. 

The bloodied flowers were essentially weightless, but Ryan’s pocket felt like it weighed as much as a ton of bricks. Strangely philosophical, he wondered (that was, if his assumption of Gavin having Hanahaki was correct) if this was what it felt like to harbour the burdening weight of a secret.

⁑

After returning to the office with Jack in tow and burning off the last of the day’s energy by obliterating the back corner of the room with _Myattballs_ , the crew had finally slowed down enough to a soft hum of chatter. Because as amazing as the day was and how much fun they’d all had, there was the heavy knowledge of what would transpire once they all agreed to leave.

Gavin stalled by texting Dan back, dreading the moment when Micheal would end his conversation with Trevor and Jack, Jeremy’s with a phone-fidgeting Ryan, and when the nervous figure of Geoff made his way back from the support room.

As he peeks up from his phone and looks around at all his friends, he knows he’s failed to hold up his end of that relationship bargain; and not just Ryan—however, especially Ryan—as he sits here in a puddle of his own lies and has them fret over the possibility of their coworker not beating cancer when really, he doesn’t even _have_ cancer and that he's going to get fixed in a way that _stops_ him from dying as opposed to the harmful methods of cancer treatment. 

If only they knew that his heart harboured more pain than his lungs had this entire time.

“Hey dickhead,” Micheal nabbed, turning away from his chatter with Jeremy, spinning his chair around.

“‘Ello y’plonk,” Gavin teased back, plopping his phone face down onto his desk and leaning back dramatically in his chair. His throat tickled at the unprecedented use, but Gavin fought the urge to cough, lest something solid trail the outburst of air. 

He’s made it this far, no point tacking on a little more pain and discomfort if it means he doesn’t cock it all up in the last hour.

And really, this is _it_ , isn’t it? 

⁑

The last dregs of time inched by, but also managed to simultaneously be a horrid blur, and he doesn’t really know what he even _wants_ to remember at this point. 

What Gavin knows he’ll remember, though, (if he can) is the ‘hugging train’ that starts when Jeremy and Micheal take a single look at each other, and with a simple, affirmative nod, barrel towards the brit, sandwiching him in from either side. 

Gavin squirms in their hold before accepting his fate and letting himself be caged, the two announcing their triumph with what they dub the “ _gav-wich_!”, which (ha, that rhymed) was just as bad a name as Garboman, but who was he to judge, given the _elegant_ catalogue of his Worms’ names. 

Soon enough, however, they end their assault, and proceed to hug him individually before they prepare to pass him off to someone else. Micheal’s hugs are warm and familiar, comfortable after years of friendship and closeness, and he swats Gavin’s back when the brit blows a curl out of his face. Jeremy, in his strange way, is a weird anomaly of coziness. He’s shorter than Gavin, but also twice as built, so it is an odd mix between feeling surrounded and feeling like; in different circumstances, like _he_ should be the one comforting Jeremy. But alas, Gavin smiled into the embrace anyways, trying not to think too hard about it, and accepting the comfort for what it was—a hoax, he reminds himself, but being gently shoved into his boss kicks the thought out of his brain.

Trevor comes and hugs him next, or is forced too, who knows, when Jeremy pushes him into him. He’s more talkative than the lads, but given the fact that Trev is his _boss_ , he guesses it's fair. Trevor tells him to get better soon, but not to rush, as his desk will be here waiting for him whenever he decides to return, “so take as much time as you need,” he finishes with. He nods within the embrace, and Trevor then pats him on the back, smartly moving away fast as humanly possible when Fiona comes crashing through the office door and slams into Gavin’s back, almost toppling him over at the sheer surprise. He fights off another cough at the impact, not wanting her to feel at fault, and bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes copper, spinning in her boa constrictor-like hold and wrapping his lanky arms around her middle. He breathes in the smell of her body spray or perfume or whatever the christ she wears. It’s soft—contrasting the common masculine scent he had just inhaled three times over—not too potent, and smells distinctly _Fiona_ , if she could have a smell. Gavin expected that it should’ve smelt something more like gunsmoke and arson, but hey, perhaps its for the best her chaotic side isn’t out there for the bloodhounds to catch scent of. She tells her other half of Chungə to join back up with her soon, as she can’t fuck around in TTT by herself for too long. He laughs, telling her that Oddjob will be back to join forces with Po and bring the series of unfortunate events that join together them and jester Micheal in a secluded room of chaos and screaming.

Fredo is next, who gives a quick hug with a solid pat to the back, telling him to get better soon and not tucker himself out before he is almost bulldozed by Geoff, who goes,

“Alright, my turn!” and tackles Gavin—almost reminiscent of the time Ryan had football tackled him at AH Live, however not as forceful or as world-tilting—squeezing the sides of Gavin’s ribs, lifting him up off the ground. His lungs ache, and Geoff apologizes profusely when he feels Gavin stiffen reflexively, setting him down on his union jack converse. 

“I’m picking you up tomorrow, right?” Geoff asks softly, pulling away a smidge so he isnt octopussed around the brit while talking to him. 

“Yeah, I’ll text you the gubs,” Gavin says, even though he knows the time of his procedure off by heart. 

“Okay, yeah,” Geoff agrees, pulling away while saying, “guess I’ll have more time to hug your scrawny ass before then anyways, so I’ll pass you down the line.” He snorts, and is shifted along into the arms of Jack. 

“C’mere you idiot,” Jack says fondly, and Gavin can agree with everyone that, yes, Jack really does give the best hugs. His beard is a little scratchy, but the way he just bleeds _comfort_ makes up for it pretty damn well.

“Twat,” Gavin pipes back, heatless, leeching for a second longer in Jack’s homely hug, before he’s released, looking around and kinda feeling awkward at the corral they have made around him, all watching with badly-hidden sad eyes and fond smiles. He forces himself not to cry, the burning sensation in his nose that comes with the initial feeling of tears is accompanied with another cough trying to crawl up his throat, and he just clears it quietly and swallows. 

“We’ve got Team Same Voice ending, it seems,” Jack observes with a smile as he officially pulls out of arm's reach, and Ryan steps into the now unoccupied space as he moves out of the outer group. 

Ryan has always either steeled his emotions like a brick wall, or is easier to read than a Word document in size 30 font. Today he appears to be the latter, and his face is a mix of sentiment like the rest of them with a splash of badly hidden sadness. 

Gavin hopes his hopeless love for this man is not portrayed across his face, and he’s honestly glad his is hidden from both his friends and Ryan as they pull each other into a gentle hug. 

_Bugger_.

Perhaps he’s biased. Definitely biased. But. But he thinks Jack has a new contender. In his head Ryan just got crowned again, the Mad King now bolstering both the official crown and the crown of hugs. 

Ryan’s just a little bit taller, but the breadth of him is that much bigger than Gavin’s slim build, and he almost goes boneless in his arms. Which, shite, that would be awkward. He hopes he’s not blatantly obvious when he buries his head into the plane of Ryan’s clavicle, the light scent of his worn of cologne and sweat from earlier filling Gavin’s—definitely average sized—nose. It’s not as unpleasant as one would think, and his shampoo, much like how Fiona’s had somehow smelt like her, smells undeniably _Ryan._

“Don’t die on us, yeah?” Ryan teases, breath tickling Gavin’s ear from how it is rotated out because of the almost _intimate_ positioning of his head. He can’t help it though, Ryan’s arms caging him feel like coming home, and he, for once, actually allows himself to picture falling asleep and waking up like this—in Ryan’s arms—and even tries to memorize how they lock around his torso, how his hands sit, how he smells, before he forgets the sensation forever. 

At least, he hopes not forever. 

But, perhaps forever as someone filled so close to overflowing with _want_ for the simple act of closeness such as this with a single, specific person. 

“I won't,” he confesses, and it’s the first truthful, most easily honest thing he’s said to the man’s face in what feels like months. Not that he’s lied through his teeth every second, but some things are definitely easier to confess than others. 

“Good,” Ryan says, automatically and honestly, and Gavin relishes in the final moments they have before someone goes, 

“Team Love n’ Stuff really livin’ up to their name here,” and Gavin swears his heart and lungs simultaneously stop when Ryan squeezes tighter before slipping loose, backing up a second before everyone comes barging in, circling Gavin in some giant group hug like he’s going to be leaving for ten years, or forever, or something insane, but he basks in the care when he’s given it like his cats in the late afternoon sun. 

When they’re all finished, he receives a final squeeze from Micheal, who won’t see him until he comes back, and from that moment on, he shuts his memory off because today’s been generally _happy_ , and this bittersweet ending isn’t going to ruin it. 

⁑

Gavin’s head is resting against the passenger window of Geoff’s car.

His eyes are glossed over to an extent, the hood of his green tie dye _you can do better_ hoodie pulled up over his untameable mop of hair, and he tries his best to ignore Geoff’s hand that keeps twitching from where it rests on the gearshift, fingers flexing intermittently towards Gavin’s jean-clad kneecap. 

The radio is muted, and all they hear between them is the tread of the tires rolling over the cracked pavement on the way to the hospital, the 5:00 AM Texas sun already beginning to heat up the asphalt. 

His downcast eyes are red-rimmed, and every time he blinks, they burn with the dried and still-drying salt of his tears. 

Last night was a horror he wishes not to remember, as the moment he got home he couldn’t even hope to stave it off, just a constant reminiscing and regretting, shifting to longing and lies, and back and forth between wanting to go through with this and wondering if it would be easier if he just _died._

He even got as low as typing out a text to Ryan himself, a full-blown admittance of his failures as a friend, and an apology for everything. He deleted it a few hours later, too much of a coward to go through with it, and a sucker for suffering apparently. 

He couldn’t bring himself to sleep, and the minutes had ticked by. He recalled texting Dan once or twice, Micheal and a few others texting him a _goodnight_ , and it was only when Geoff texted him that he was going to come pick him up in about an hour, that he realized he hadn’t slept at _all_. 

So here he was, on a metaphorical death-march, and he ignores the tears that he knows are in Geoff’s eyes just as much as he ignores his own threatening to resurface again. 

It's for the best, he knows—the price of hurting himself, and others to a _small_ extent, as opposed to admitting his disgusting truth and hurting them all to an _immeasurable_ extent. 

Because having everyone _sad_ is much more desirable than having everyone _repulsed_. 

⁑

It was the first thing he tried to do, when he woke up after the operation. 

He ransacked his brain for anything about- about _who?_ Gavin frowns and concludes that the procedure went well. 

And they tell him such, asking him about Ryan—his name was _Ryan_ —and the shake of his head makes the surgeon or doctor or whatever he is draw a strange thing with his face. And after a moment, Gavin recognizes it as a mix of guilt, relief, and a war between whether to be happy or sad for the patient in front of him. 

Because that person in front of them may be living now, pain and Hanahaki free, but they had just lost the one person that they held to the highest standard—the one they loved so much that they manifested a fatal disease because of them. 

“It’s not all that tragic,” Gavin forgives, a slight edge of chastisement to his voice, “I’m no longer dying, yeah?”

“No, you aren’t, I guess,” the man replies, a sad smile making its way onto his face. “I can’t say it gets any easier, though, performing that.”

“A double-edged sword, innit?” 

“Yes. That.” he agrees, “However, it’s more like two of those, one for me, and one for you, hm?”

“Yeah.” Gavin sighs, feeling selfish _again_ , _already_ , at the knowledge that he assumed the hurt was only going to be projected on himself, but apparently this innocent man, who had no connection or knowledge of Gavin’s ailment besides the hard facts, also felt bad in the aftermath of performing the procedure that eliminated his patient’s pain—but then again, also removed a third-of-a-lifetime's' worth of love and pining, of memories (both good and bad) and of _them_. 

“Well, onto the more medical terms of things before I clear you to go,” his doctor began, kicking him out of his thoughts, “It will take a few days for the remnants of the _stuff_ ” he gestures vaguely with his gloved hands, “to clear out, because everything still there will take some time to wither. Coughing will probably be the easiest in dislodging it, but be sure not to hurt yourself, your throat has gone through hell for the past few months.”

He nodded his thanks and understanding, mind finally coming to terms with the ultimatum of this all. 

It’s done. It’s over. 

He’s not dying anymore. 

There’s no need for him to make lies anymore. (Only continue to live out the old ones.)

He’s not in love with Ryan anymore. He doesn’t know _how_ to love Ryan anymore. He doesn’t know _why_ he loved Ryan anymore. 

He doesn’t know who Ryan _is_ anymore. 

And _oh_. 

That hurts, but it _shouldn’t_ , right? Wasn’t the hurt supposed to be gone?

Gavin’s not so sure anymore. 

⁑

Despite the fact that Ryan was definitely supposed to be unaware that Gavin had ever had any trace of Hanahaki, he still feels an inexplicable amount of guilt whenever he thinks upon the fact.

Ryan’s definitely no matchmaker, but he feels, perhaps, if he did some more research, maybe he could do some process of elimination and find out who Gavin crushed on and see if he could conjure up something if it was possible—aka given that they were not already in a relationship with someone other than Gavin himself. 

The whole Hanahaki search was basic enough. He knew what the disease was and how one obtained it, but he never had much interest in finding a relationship after the occasional fling in late high school and college given that he was back and forth with jobs and all over the place with Achievement Hunter nowadays. People didn’t generally take an internet gamer all that seriously, especially if they had already viewed their content. _Eeh._ So, Ryan had given up with crushes and relationships a while ago, and although he wouldn’t ever be opposed to one, he just kinda shoved it on the backburner and hoped it didn’t burn itself out before it was too late. 

Once he crashcoursed the biology and science behind the disease, Ryan in turn went on to the more historical and social issued laced within it to maybe have a better understanding of Gavin’s head—which, really, was kinda impossible given the fact that the _brit_ probably didn't even understand it—but, worth a shot nonetheless. A little empathy never hurt, Ryan supposed.

So it figures that since humans used to generally bustle around in groups of their own status—royalty, wealthy, soldiers, tradesmen, farmers, etc—people never really shot for people out of their league, and everything was all sunshine and rainbows for the most part. People fell in love with people they spent time around, and nobody really spoke about or publicized the idea of self confidence or lack of, and they generally shot their shot, even with fear of being rejected. Arranged marriages definitely helped eliminate the presence of the disease, and when relationships were generally for power, stability, children or familial ties, love wasn’t really something that came into the relationship until later, sadly. However, the world soon became an artistic and lovely and also thoughtful and melancholic place. People began falling in love and keeping it to themselves, and eventually it became such a big problem that Hanahaki began showing up. So, cool. There was a disease for unrequited love. Awesome. 

Not that anyone did any real research on it until we were able to do proper brain analysis and tests. 

(Ryan doesn’t miss the subtle connection in that humans generally express their initial romantic interest through procuring and presenting their loved ones with flowers, and how the disease has the inflicted literally cough up flowers in hopes that the one they love will notice their pining. It's kind of ironic, if it wasn’t so devastatingly sad.)

However, despite the fact that a fix was found, the ratio between fixes and deaths were, just— sad. It was probably a 23% fix rate, and Ryan’s heart sank at that. Gavin could have easily followed the rest in that 77% trend and Achievement Hunter and the Slow Mo Guys could have lost one of their most valuable members. 

Ryan almost closed the tabs and gave up at that point, but he kept going. _For you, Gavin_ , he found himself thinking. 

So, it turns out, most people couldn’t bear to lose the memories of a loved one that came with the fix. It was sad, horribly so, but with the knowledge that Gavin had just lost all memories for someone he had crushed on, Ryan could sneakily play the process of elimination and rule out instances that he remembered in high detail. 

However, if it was someone at Achievement Hunter or Rooster Teeth, Ryan, well. He couldn’t blame Gavin. He understood, totally, there was enough video history of the company and likely that person that Gavin could evidently go back and watch all the content involving that person on his time off to replenish a good chunk of his memory involving that person. It was a good choice, obviously distressingly a hard one to make, but smart, to some degree. 

Ryan wouldn’t fault him for that at all, and could never resent Gavin for making such a choice—even if whoever he loved did.

⁑

It starts with Youtube. 

Didn’t it _all_ start with Youtube?

Well, if it did, Gavin can’t remember exactly why, but he’s determined to figure it out soon. 

Not even for the fact that he wants to remember who Ryan is for the sake of finding out what caused him to fall in love with him, but more because of the fact that he _has_ to, or else he’ll be going back to work with essentially half of his memory gone. 

He and Trevor settled on two weeks, in the end of it all, and on a personal account that’s not the Slow Mo Guys channel, Gavin clicks on a private playlist he made, and goes through every Ryan compilation, Team Love n’ Stuff compilation, and random videos his pre-procedure self had added in the hopes that they would be _enough_ to remember Ryan. 

He has a Google Doc full of links to Reddit threads, Tumblr pages, Wiki pages, and more, and he sucks in the information like a sponge, trying to remember throughout it all that this is for _work_ , because he _has_ to, not because he _wants_ to, and not because he’s curious as to why he had fallen for this man in the first place. 

Gavin keeps all of his friends’ text threads, because for the most part they are a _gold mine_ of attachments and jokes and links that he knows he’ll need at _some point_ , so it’s not hard to find his and Ryan’s, and he goes through stuff they had briefly talked about, as in quick tech checks or questions, simple work things like _are you in this video today?_ , or _Micheal brought lunch_ , or _I’m streaming gmod with Jer, Jack and Meg, wanna join in?_. 

Their relationship was friendly, co-worker _ish_ at some points, and definitely had no inkling of anything more than friends aside from some random, suggestive comments during videos that Gavin’s rational mind tells him was just part of their dynamic. 

He sees why he never confessed, because it would just make everything _weird_.

And Gavin would rather forget his love than have Ryan shun him out for making everything awkward as hell.

Because, Gavin remembers, he’s _lucky_. 

⁑

“Gavvers!”

“Boi! Holy shit, you didn’t die!”

“Hey Gav!”

“Gavin—oh my god, you’re looking so much better already!”

The warm welcome was a nice feeling when he walked into the office after his fortnight away from it’s familiar and homely atmosphere. 

After an hour or so of celebrating and welcoming Gavin back in good health, they were back to work like regular, smiles all around with their Brit’s return, and the joy in the room was almost tangible, and even Gavin himself couldn’t fight off it’s contagiousness.

He found he could breathe clearly again, with a lot more ease as they got into the thrall of commentary again, however, his lungs and throat were still healing. 

He found out he had phantom tickles in the back of his throat quickly after coming home, but he realized they appeared more often while talking, given that he didn’t really talk to himself at home, and he still had to mute his mic a few times to avoid coughing full-force at the audience. 

However, these times, when he coughed, there were no vines crawling up his trachea, no flowers lodged in his airways.

No more Ryan filling up his lungs.

Which was discovered very quickly, unfortunately. 

Because for all the research and memory-healing he went through, it was the little things; the quick reference to a moment in GTA causing him to blank, and having to have the crew play it off as Gavin still being fuzzy from recovery. 

But the things started piling up, mentions of events, stuff that wasn’t _public_ , and just the fact that it involved Ryan leaving his recollection of it remotely blank.

⁑

Ryan hoped that nobody noticed that he started referencing and bringing up random facts about random things and people at random points during videos, during lunch, and at just any point of the day, and he hoped they didn’t notice that at least one of his eyes was always gauging Gavin’s reactions each time he spoke.

If anything, they just gave him a strange look and chucked it up to _Ryan being Ryan_ , which, well, worked for him. 

It takes him a few weeks, but after slowly crossing everyone off a list he had written on sticky notes at home, he thinks _who the fuck did I forget_?—Until, he comes to a slow, molasses speed realization. 

The only person he forgot on his month-long list of subtle sleuthing and questionnaires, was _himself._

So, after coming to terms with it, Ryan goes to sleep with the plan to settle his research project once and for all. 

He comes into work the next day with a mental checklist of what he wants to accomplish, but there's still one vital piece of the puzzle that he needs to slot into place: he needs an incident, or a moment, or a reference, that he can use to sleuth out initially. 

Afterall, Gavin has shown many small signs of hesitance at mentions here and there, but Ryan has most of the time been unable to pinpoint which person in the equation was the cause of the blank, depending on how many people were involved in the memory. For something like work, it is always hard to find a moment between Gavin and one other individual that Ryan knows in detail, but also _wasn’t_ a part of.

Now, however, Ryan can dig deep into memories of just him and the brit alone, to see if he can cause any blanks. He has to think of ones that wouldn’t be public, one’s that Gavin couldn’t search through the internet and find mentions of, or even surf through their texts and find. He needs an instance, basically one that was only mentioned and brought up at that point and that point alone.

It's hard to come up with something that won’t seem totally _random_ and creepily _specific_ in nature of a question, so he takes some time to think on it. 

He comes up blank, and he actually considers either giving up or straight up _asking_ Gavin, but that’s outlandish, and absurd beyond belief, so he shoves a stopper in that thought before it can even think of manifesting itself. 

Instead, he comes up with the plan of action that will take place over the course of what he assumes will be a while. It was easier to rule out the other Achievement Hunters because, well, it wasn’t just _him_ that attributed to the questioning. All of the office’s side comments, quick jokes, and other random things that got brought up over the course of Let’s Plays easily helped Ryan along with his initial list, as it was not just him being the cause of information output and instances where Gavin would have the potential for a blank in his memory, but to find instances where it could _undoubtedly_ rule Ryan out as the cause were a little more difficult.

Ryan’s days went by in snapshots, little bits and pieces outputted here and there to possibly trigger a blank from his coworker, or even just a small hesitance where Gavin would need to jog his own memory.

He almost thought it to be fruitless, a dead-end search and perhaps Ryan had been just totally _wrong_ —

Maybe Gavin hadn’t had Hanahaki at all, or even if he did, it wasn’t for him, or someone at the office at _all_ , maybe it was some random fucking person who he met in passing, met through the Slow Mo Guys, or, or. 

Ryan doesn’t know.

He borderline gives up, until it comes to fruition almost three full weeks into his so far futile project. 

It’s a small reference to a one-off they did, an unreleased video that Ryan had found footage of on his phone when he was sending more recent captures from a Between the Games he had spontaneously shot when Gavin was out of the office that the support room needed to surf through for footage, and when he’s sending them through, he sees _it_. 

It was another prank, similar to the time he helped Gavin with his unwarranted one on Trevor, but the reaction never got filmed courtesy to a go-pro dying on them, so it was footage that was basically scrapped and forgotten, another video thought up to replace it in no time. 

He watched it, and there was no doubt in his mind going into work the next day that if _this_ didn’t cause a blank, then _nothing_ would. 

And, sure enough, when he finds one of his finesse and _Ryan_ ways of sneaking it into a conversation—even managing to keep it out of a video and just in casual conversation—and Gavin _halts_ , a ‘when was that, again?’ being his answer, that something in Ryan’s head switches, and he mentally cheers _Bingo_ , at the same time he curses _fuck_. 

Because not only did Gavin have Hanahaki for sure—a direct memory loss to a specific event revolving around only him and the person in question—but he also had been suffering through Hanahaki because of _Ryan_. 

Now, Ryan realizes in this moment that he no longer has to play matchmaker, but he has to play fixer upper, because this whole debacle is indirectly his fault. 

He was the cause of Gavin’s suffering, and for someone that has a pretty solid stomach, Ryan has to excuse himself to the washroom for a moment, and he throws up his lunch.

⁑

See here. _Look_. Ryan wasn’t dubbed the Mad King for nothing. He had to earn that title, not that he had many to compete against with in the malicious feat, but still. 

However, in all chaos there is calculation, or whatever they say. Or what when they argue how closely geniusness and madness coincide. So, with that, _theoretically_ , Ryan’s head isn’t screwed on too loose when he calls himself mad. 

You see, by labelling him mad, all anyone ever did was acknowledge that he could conjure up ideas that were too crazy to be thought up by the normal person. 

So, naturally, Ryan did just that.

He walked a fine line between subtlety and galacticraft nukes, so he could be anywhere in the spectrum on any given day. But, however, the problem with this was, well. 

See, when we’re talking about the Mad King, there’s usually murder involved. Obviously. So, if it’s murder, usually people outright know its happening because Ryan is nowhere near silent with that. However, Gavin’s predicament isn’t murder. This is a matter that Ryan wasn’t supposed to find out, and therefore, in the exchange, neither can Gavin. 

Queue the business proposal charts.

This is the problem: Gavin’s in a vulnerable position. Given that Ryan is now aware of the crush ( _affliction_ , he knows—however it makes something inside him roll over when he thinks about causing Gavin harm), he knows that there is definitely a chance Gavin can reestablish the disease again, and thus go through another horrifying experience according to Ryan’s research. 

So. That’s clearly not happening. So, therefore, Ryan has to make sure that it doesn't. 

Here’s his solution: Trick his mind into thinking that he’s in love with Gavin. Okay. Look—he said he was mad, okay? Now listen. See, Ryan’s well, Ryan. And so therefore this plan has a few outcomes. He’s a Mad King, not a miracle worker. 

Outcome One: (aka best case scenario) Ryan successfully tricks his biology into thinking he loves Gavin, and through this, IF Gavin too is also back to crushing, it’ll sort itself out and they both live Hanahaki free. 

Outcome Two: Ryan doesn’t trick biology, doesn’t get Hanahaki, and either Gavin does or doesn’t. (this is the gamble scenario) 

Outcome Three: Ryan tricks biology, but Gavin doesn’t crush again, and Ryan gets Hanakahi himself. (which, is fine, he thinks, because it won’t show up for many, many years, so there’s that)

Now that he can see where he’s going with this, Ryan can now do his extended research on how the Hanahaki gland works, and see how he can effectively try to trick his own biology. 

Crazy is as crazy does, and all that shit.

⁑

It's because of his little exercise that Ryan finds himself sitting at the edge of his bed on a Tuesday evening. 

Team Love n’ Stuff has officially come back in full swing after it’s slow descent into nothingness a few years ago, and it's definitely not unnoticed by both the rest of the Achievement Hunters and the long-time fans, excited to see the comeback of a dynamic that always had them on the edge of their seats; not knowing whether Gavin and Ryan’s chaotic nature would destroy everything, or if their combined competence would have them outshine the other people playing. 

Not that he and Gavin had ignored each other for that time in between, but other, new people came into the picture and games shifted, schedules shifted, and things like Battle Buddies flew into the spotlight, along with Chungə, and aside from the odd GTA, one-time encounters in TTT and the very rare Hitman videos, he and Gavin didn’t really interact all that much as an isolated duo. 

However, it was through reigniting their chaotic dyad that had Ryan sitting here, contemplating to a further depth than before; the _reality_ of all this. 

It's been a few months, and sitting here, Ryan doesn’t know what the _hell_ was going on in his head when he thought he could _trick_ his actual goddamn brain, but it clearly wasn’t something decided in a moment of clarity. He thinks he probably had thought it up as a haste and frantic reaction to the news that a person who had Hanahaki was still susceptible to rebounds, and immediately after finding that he, himself was the cause, couldn’t bear to be the indirect weapon again. 

However, apparently something hadn’t _clicked_ , and Previous-Ryan clearly didn’t see the stupidity in his own ideas. 

Because you can’t _fake_ love.

On the outside, maybe, but, when the only person he was trying to fool here was _himself_ , it wasn't plausible. And Ryan doesn’t know why it took him this long to see it. 

In order to supposedly _trick_ himself, to supposedly _fake_ love, Ryan had to _pretend_ to be in love with Gavin, and not make it seem real to others, but rather, real to _himself_. 

He begins doing little things like noticing the colour of Gavin’s eyes in a way that makes him want to get a closer look, or continuing to find excuses to tease or prompt him in games, stealing little, nonchalant glances between the monitors between them, or enjoying his presence now that he’s back in the office, or—

But that isn’t being _shared_ , it isn't something that anybody else is noticing other than _him_. It hilariously reminds him of those fake-dating tropes in tv shows and movies, where both parties end up actually falling for eachother but they both think it's fake and—and it’s not hilarious anymore, he finds. 

He hasn’t been _tricking_ himself, _thinking_ he’s in love, he’s well and gone and actually did it. 

He’s actually in love with Gavin. 

And the usual butterflies and on-the-moon feeling and the fireworks with the spinning camera don’t happen, and instead Ryan feels guilty. 

Holding onto Gavin’s ungiven secret was already too much for him, so, what more is there for Ryan to really do but come clean, and spill everything, he discerns. He could hide like a fucking panzy in his lies and schemes, or he could be an actual good human being and _friend_ and confess to the wrongs he’s done. 

He sits here, at the edge of his bed, almost sick in disbelief at his realization, but also comes to the conclusion that he’s sick of secrets too—and Ryan doesn’t want to feel sick anymore. 

⁑

It was now almost four months later and Ryan was reaching the end of his rope. He had dug himself way too deep into Edgar’s hole and he couldn’t dig himself back out. 

Ever since he formulated his plan to protect Gavin at the expense of himself—which was the only part he agreed with—he still couldn’t stand the rotting ache of guilt that he felt whenever Gavin came to mind, was in the same room as him, or was talked about. Any interaction between them caused his stomach to churn, and he felt increasingly guiltier as the days trudged on. 

He was harbouring a secret that wasn’t even his own and was manipulating the result of it without the other even knowing. 

Ryan hated himself for it as much as he believed that it might be preventing Gavin from getting hurt again. Still, he needed to explain everything to Gavin, and just hope, hopelessly hope, that he still considered Ryan as a friend after this. It was serious and Ryan knew that. 

However, getting an opportunity to talk to Gavin alone, or even to suggest the topic of talking to Gavin alone would sound horribly suspicious to the ears of everyone else. He wanted it to be a private manner, like it should be, just between the two of them because although everyone was witness to it all, nobody _knew_. They were stupidly oblivious, _he_ was (or had been) stupidly oblivious. 

It had been three days of him flailing about trying to converse with Gavin one-on-one, even to just suggest that he wanted to talk about something serious in a more private manner, but the brit was slipperier than a bar of wet soap, and he was always jambled in the hands of another—talking to anyone, recording a video, on a podcast—and it was hell. 

He was scared to talk to Gavin before (the irony, because wasn’t that _Gavin’s_ initial problem?) and now that he wanted to he couldn’t even get the opportunity. 

It was now a Thursday night, and he had just finished streaming when he solidified his idea. He was quazi-unfocused the entire thing, losing his trains of thought often and zoning out while playing constantly, all because he couldn’t stop thinking about how to approach Gavin—and it wasn’t like he could ask his community for help, despite the fact that they would probably be ten times as better at this than he ever would—so he was left with the tv-static wildness of his own thoughts. 

He constantly created a new text thread with Gavin—Ryan liked his messages to be clean and deleted them unless he absolutely needed them; that, and he hated wasting storage—and deleted it after he realized he didn’t even know what he’s supposed to text the guy. He did this five more times throughout the haphazard process of shutting down his stream, and by the time one in the morning rolls around he hasn’t even _thought_ of sleep and he’s incessantly spinning side to side on his chair, drumming his fingers to a rapid nonexistent beat on his armrest. 

He slips into bed at 2:45 AM, after forcing himself to take a scalding hot shower, but despite being exhausted, all he can seem to do is stare at the place where his phone rests on his side table and listen to the thrum of his ceiling fan until dawn. 

⁑

He rolls into his driveway the next day after work and stalls off the inevitable by cleaning his kitchen. In the process he ends up forging some quesadillas for dinner with whatever leftovers he had from previous nights—he’s always been horrible at meal planning—and chips away at his audiobook while he eats. 

Ryan’s never really been spontaneous—that’s more of a Micheal and Gavin thing—so when it comes to texts, he’s never that either. Sure, they’re practical and never overly lengthy unless need-be, but he tends to be a more methodical person. He thinks things out, plans them, and executes, especially when it comes to video games. His sporadicness only ever comes out as response to something else, which is generally just a process of his reaction-time and split-second decision making. 

But despite all of that, it hasn’t seemed to come to fruition and work for him with Gavin. And at this point, Ryan thinks he actually might have to work _like_ Gavin, and just spontaneously send him a text, repercussions be damned. He’s got three days to forget—or overthink—about it, so he figures that's the best he’s gonna get, really. 

He continues to stall, however. 

Only now, it’s getting notoriously late, well, in formal standards, and he knows if he draws it out any longer it’s just gonna be rude.

**Gavin**

**Friday** 9:27 PM

_Question_

_?_

_go for it_

_It’s probably going to sound very absurd, so bear with me._

_I have something that I need to talk to you about privately, would that be okay?_

_Unless you’re planning to murder me Ry, I don’t see why not_

_Okay, sounds good_

_Why?_

_Whats up?_

_it’ll be easier in person i think_

_sorry for the vagueness._

_I think that if there wasn’t some level of vagueness to it, i dont think it would be you_

_Well, that’s comforting at least_

_so, where you wanna do this?_

_at work?_

_lunch somewheres?_

_house?_

_Up to you._

_I think work eliminates the idea of privacy, and perhaps out somewhere too._

_So, maybe either one of our places or I could drive around_

_I have a lot to say, so I don’t want you to feel caged, if that makes sense._

_if thats whats worrying you, then we can drive around,_

_ill pay u back for gas_

_No need._

_I’m not sure of your schedule so just let me know when you’re free to chat._

_Sure thing_

_Have a good night_

_sorry again for the strangeness_

_It’s good, no worries :)_

**Saturday** 4:26 PM

_Just finished editing, what’s your plans after dinner?_

_Zilch_

_We can talk then, if you’d like?_

_Sure._

_Text me when you’re done eating and I’ll swing by_

_Sounds top_

At this point, Ryan is flat out freaking out, very-unlike himself, but he accepts it, given the gravity of the situation.

**Saturday** 5:13 PM

_Whenever ur ready_

Holy shit. Will he _ever_ be ready? He thinks sardonically. 

_Gimme 10_

**Saturday** 5:26 PM

_Here_

Ryan’s hands are shaking on the wheel after he sends the text, almost sending ‘ _hete’,_ instead of ‘ _here’_ , and he did that _twice_ , having to backspace two times before being able to correctly type out an english-correct spelling of the word with his twitching fingers. 

“Hey Ry,” Gavin says sheepishly, slowly opening the door and cautiously sliding into the passenger seat. Ryan knows he didn’t know what to expect, so he doesn’t call him out on it. 

“Hi,” he returns, reversing out of the driveway and pulling out onto the street. 

“So, you wanted to talk?” Gavin segued, straight to the point. 

“Yeah, forgive my spontaneousness, I tried to catch you alone at the office to just tell you that I had something to say, but I never caught you at the right time.” 

“Oh, bollocks, sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Ryan turns to smile reassuringly as he stops at a red light. 

“So, what’s up?”

“Look, well, I—Hm.” 

Gavin failed to suppress a snicker, and Ryan briefly smiles—at least he is flubbing, one normal thing about this. 

“I'm going to go cold turkey and just blatantly say this.” Gavin was quiet, waiting for Ryan to continue. “Gav, I-I. You didn’t have sclc, did you?” 

Okay, so he went like, room temperature turkey. However, Gavin still froze like it wasn’t. 

“I-“ Gavin pointedly stared straight out the front windshield, “well, no, you’re not wrong. I did..n’t. But-“ 

“Hey, it's fine.” Ryan reassures, “but look, I’m going to twist the knife here by saying that I, well, I know you had Hanahaki.” 

“ _Bollocks—_ I. How?” Gavin briefly swivels his head to Ryan, “When? I thought— _this long?_ ” 

“Your last day,” Ryan halts Gavin’s disbelief, “you uh, left the bench to go put your camera stuff away with Jack, and I finished cleanup, and saw a few mashed flowers where you had sat. I was probably the only one who saw it, but you must’ve missed them when you left. I’m sorry, I know it wasn’t something you wanted anyone to find out.” 

“I’m sorry, I just-It’s that—“ 

Gavin almost jumps when Ryan takes a hand off the wheel and briefly rests his hand on the brit’s knee. It was bare and warm, given that he was wearing his signature salmon shorts. 

“If this is about why you chose to do what you did, I totally understand your decision.” Ryan knew he didn’t imagine Gavin relaxing, “I would much rather be able to have this conversation than not at all.

“But I’m afraid I know more, and have a lot more to share than just that. This is why I didn’t want you to feel caged, because if you want to stop at any point, at all, just tell me and I’ll bring you straight home, no questions asked, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, so, after I figured that you had it, out of my own curiosity I took it upon myself to find out who you had crushed on. Which, totally not my place, and I’m sorry I crossed another line that I wasn’t supposed to. The fault is mine. 

Regardless, through process of elimination I found out, rather alarmingly at the time, that it must’ve been me. Correct me if I’m wrong?” 

Gavin shook his head in a slight no, staring at his feet. 

“Right, so. I did some research beforehand to get a sense of what the disease was. I learned that they had found cases where someone who had it before was twice as likely to rebound if the crush re-manifested itself, and I took it upon myself to create a master plan to ensure that didn’t happen to you. 

“And, as you’ve witnessed, it wasn’t to distance myself, but rather to get closer. I had planned to trick my own brain into thinking I was in love with you so that if you ever did happen to crush again, if I succeeded, there was a good chance that you wouldn’t get it. 

“And, _sure_ , it sounded like a good plan at the time, but then I realized that I was manipulating you emotionally, gambling on feelings that I had no right to fiddle with, and for that I’m sorry.

“But, well, that’s not where my faults end. In the process of trying to trick my mind, I ended up realizing that, well, you actually _can’t_. So, you see, I realized eventually that I wasn’t tricking myself at all, only dragging up things that I never cared to come face to face with in the beginning. I literally was just solidifying my own crush for you while trying to prevent yours.” 

“Ry—”

“I know, it’s—frankly—pathetic, and I am so, _so_ , fucking sorry for unintentionally taking advantage of you when you didn’t even mean for me to have the information to be able to do so with.” 

“Ryan, lovely Ryan, it's fine—I’m just, _bloody_ rattled, and, and, no—It's _me_. I’m sorry, not you. I’m sorry, I-“

“Gavin. Look at me.” Ryan slightly turns his own face away from the road to meet the brit’s eyes, “If you, at a _single_ point, try to apologize for choosing what you did, then _that’s_ when I’ll never forgive you. But I am telling you the undoubtable truth when I say that I’d rather you never remember a single thing about me if it keeps you from ever going through that pain again.

“I can’t even begin to fathom what you went through on your own, so _please_ , you have nothing to apologize for, at all. ever. okay? Promise me you won’t blame yourself at all for that.” 

“I—okay, yeah. I can’t say I’ll succeed, but I can try.” 

“Then that’s all I ask, easy as that.” 

“But you—“

“Gav, you have nothing to apologize for. _Please_.”

The silence that follows the trailing conversation is deafening in the radio-muted car. Ryan doesn’t question or try to reinstate it, just keeps driving in an aimless route to nowhere in specific, giving his friend—or _whatever_ this made Gavin—time to think. There was a hell of a lot to unpack in that conversation, and although there’s not a lot of stuff for _him_ to mull over, Gavin basically has to sift through the word count of a classroom set of essay’s, and Ryan can see his face shift, can sense little head turns as he peels his eyes away from the dashboard and towards the side of Ryan’s road-facing head, pondering and debating over the information he was just given. 

“Ryan?” He eventually asks, voice small, timid to break the calm silence. 

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for telling me. I know I—maybe we could have communicated better at an earlier point—but, I, thanks. for-for not loathing what I did, especially because it was you, and-and. _shite_. I just—thanks for forgiving it.”

“There was nothing to forgive, Gavin, you did nothing wrong.” 

“But—I never told you, I could’ve—I. I’m sorry.” 

“You were dealing with a lot, I imagine. Your health comes first and foremost, and there is no way you or I would have known what my reaction would have been if you _did_ end up telling me. Perhaps if I didn’t find out in this way, I wouldn’t have been able to realize things on my own end.” Ryan returns the hand to Gavins knee again, “I should be thanking _you_ for accepting my faults. I did things I shouldn’t have and I thank you for understanding why I did them, especially now that I see my own mistakes.” 

“It’s okay Ry, we’re even now, I guess.” And Ryan doesn’t hide the smile that sneaks by when Gavin manages to huff a laugh. 

“So that means nothing needs to be hidden between us now, ya? The office, sure, until you’re comfortable- _if_ you're ever comfortable, but.” 

“Yes, please. I think I’m sick of hiding things, at least from you, for a long while.” 

“Good.” Ryan confirms, “me too.” 

There's another long bout of silence, and Ryan lets it happen without a second thought. There's a weight off the both of their shoulders now, and everything feels just a little bit _lighter_ , the world a bit more _colourful_ , and the presence of each other a little less _painful_. 

All their secrets and lies have all been bared to each other, and it feels like the metaphorical guillotine over their heads has either disappeared in thin air, or has just slid, impossibly, just in front of their eyes. 

The stitches that they used to sew themselves back together have finally stopped pulling, and finally the wounds seem to start to heal, and rather than being the end of something painful, this seems to be the beginning of something new, forged out of the scars and despite its irony, it feels like it begins to _bloom_. 

Because, what’s that saying—there can’t be any flowers without a little rain? Seems fitting, after everything. 

It continues on a little longer, and Ryan’s observance this time around sees Gavin’s fingers twitching on his kneecap. Hoping it comes across as comforting and not stepping over any invisible lines, Ryan slowly takes his hand off the gearshift, making sure the brit’s eyes track the movement before he proceeds any further, and ends up with his hand covering Gavin’s own. 

He senses Gavin looking over, and gives him a slow, oscillating nod, one that continues and fades out until it dies, and as it trails off, Gavin’s palm upturns, and he slowly, carefully, laces his keyboard-callused fingers into Ryan’s own. 

Ryan gives it a comforting squeeze to know it’s welcome, and relaxes into what he figures is the final few minutes of their soul-bearing car ride. 

“So, you wanna go home?” Ryan asks quietly, the cut into the silence a little less stark this time, and he softly raises an eyebrow with the question. “Think it over? It’s been a lot, and I’m sure you’re exhausted. We can always talk tomorrow, settle a few things.” 

“Sh—sure. Yeah. I think so.” 

“Alright.” Ryan affirms, as simple as that, and begins the route back to Gavin’s place. 

⁑

He pulls into the driveway about fifteen minutes later, and slowly—and partially regretfully—removes his hand from their now-sweaty grasp, and puts the car in park. 

There’s a hesitation before Ryan unlocks the car, an unspoken _something_ in the air, and it comes in the form of Gavin’s next statement. 

“Stay. Please.” It comes out clipped, hesitant, and suddenly, as if it was unplanned and just forced out by happenance. 

“Gav-” Ryan begins, wanting to make sure he understands-

“ _Shit_ , bollocks—sorry,” Gavin immediately rushes to mend, “forget it, I just cocked it up. It’s fine, you can go—sorry.” 

“No, that's not it,” Ryan finishes, “just, are you _absolutely_ sure?” 

“I-I. Just..don’t wanna be alone, I don’t think. and. well, it’s been eight years of.. and maybe, just for even tonight, you-”

“Hey—you’re beginning to flub more than me.” He jokingly chides with a smile, “Relax, Gavin, I’ll stay. It's fine, don’t worry.” 

He unclips his seatbelt and steps out of the car to show he’s serious, and Gavin follows suit, silent as he listens to Ryan continue, “I just didn’t know if you wanted space. So, I'll stay tonight and we can really talk it out tomorrow, and then settle back into work and go from there. That sound alright?” 

“Sounds top.” And when Ryan turns back around from locking the car he is instantly wrapped in a Gavin. 

“Thank you,” the brit’s muffled voice came out, buried in Ryan’s shoulder. And even if he didn’t say why, Ryan knew.

“You’re welcome.” he responds, wrapping his arms around Gavins waist before separating them for a second, “inside?” 

“Yeah, yeah.” Gavin sniffled, breaking away to lead with Ryan in tow. 

With the front door unlocked and the entrance light flipped on, the clock reads a solid 9:13 PM when they enter the kitchen, and the two of them could think of nothing else to do but sleep. 

⁑

“Christ, those probably won't be comfortable to sleep in. I didn’t think about that, sorry Rye—I might have a pair of Dan’s old-”

“Hey, it’s good,” Ryan cuts off his rambling, “I have a pair of extra clothes in my car incase of something at work. I have a pair of sweats and an old tshirt in there, I’ll go get them in a sec.”

“Curse you and your preparedness,” Gavin smiles, “well, hey, at least I had forethought to keep some new toothbrushes in my cabinet, so, I was prepared for that I guess.” 

“Well there ya go.” Ryan smirks, and steps out to go grab his aforementioned clothes. 

He comes back inside a few moments later to Gavin brushing his teeth in the small ensuite bathroom his bedroom has, and Ryan creeps up as much as he can on the matted carpet before the mirror reveals his presence, and swiftly tasers two fingers into each of Gavin’s sides, and the brit spits toothpaste froth all over the mirror, letting out a squeal and a smile so bright in the aftermath that Ryan can’t remember the last time he’s seen one so bright on him. 

“ _Royan_ ,” he mouths around a bubble of toothpaste, and waves his foamy toothbrush at Ryan as if _that_ is going to ward him off. 

“Payback for the water bottle,” Ryan smirks, and waits for the moment of realization to cross Gavin’s face, and then relaxes when he knows there’s no threat of immediate retaliation. 

(Because isn’t _retaliation childish_?) 

Ryan just laughs, and picks up the plastic-wrapped toothbrush that Gavin had pulled out of the medicine cabinet behind his mirror, and proceeds to brush his own teeth as Gavin regathers himself, toothbrush shoved inside his cheek, and watches as he takes the hand towel and swipes it through his mess on the mirror.

Before realizing that it's _dry_ , and all he does is smear white streaks across the glass. 

“ _Gav_.” Ryan shakes his head with a unhidable smile as he speaks around the toothbrush, grabbing the brit’s wrist in a hand and shoving the towel under the stream of running water.

And as they get ready for bed, something _domestic_ and familiar but new at the same time lingers between them, Ryan thinks that despite the stress of the stuff they talked about and the stuff they _still_ have to discuss, that perhaps everything will be okay. 

⁑

However, it's when they’re both standing on either side of Gavin’s queen bed, that the doubt begins to settle again, or at least, the hesitance does. 

“I-” Gavin starts, and it's a little bit of a disbelieving huff of laughter when he says, “I don’t know how to do-” 

“We’ll figure it out,” Ryan says, and reaches over the bed to the other side, flipping back Gavin’s side of the covers. “Trial and error, and _communication_ , yeah?” 

“Yeah.” Gavin affirms for himself, a little smile of relief on his face as he looks up at Ryan as he settles himself into bed, the action scaring one of his cats from where it was dozing and it hops off the bed with a quiet thud on the carpet. “Yeah, we’ll figure it out.” 

Ryan slowly peels back his side of the covers, feeling somehow like he’s back as a kid and sleeping over at a friends house, but this time the situation has a lot more _meaning_. 

“I forgot to ask, I’m sorry, are you okay with this, I mean..” Gavin trails off, looking to Ryan for an answer. 

“If i’m here, if I’m doing anything, I’m okay with it,” he says truthfully, “trust me.”

“Mkay,” Gavin replies with a yawn, turning away for a second to switch off the lamp they had on, and the room is plunged into darkness as they wait for their eyes to adjust. 

There’s a shuffling, and then he’s being gently adjusted by nimble fingers, and he willingly goes with until he’s settled comfortably on his back and Gavin settles hesitantly and softly over his left side, unsure with his movements as if waiting for Ryan to shrug or shift away from his presence. Gavin’s stiff and holding himself from shifting too much if he so much as just _breathes_ , and Ryan won't have any of that, not after all they agreed to communicate and bleed honesty, so with a small smile that Gavin won't see, he wraps his previously limp arms around the brit and squeezes him into his side more comfortably.

Gavin’s mop of hair tickles his chin, but he simply blows it out of the way with a small breath, and feels a little prideful when he feels the brit relax finally, because communication isn’t all just verbal. 

Perhaps it’s a little _close_ , and a little _much_ before they’ve had any real time to discuss anything officially, but as it is, Ryan thinks tonight can be an exception, Gavin feeding off the comfort like a leech, and even if it's just for tonight, the mutual comfort and just the knowledge that the other is close and _there_ providing something to feed what they've been starving for for a while. 

“Thank you, Ryan,” Gavin mutters softly into the shirt covering Ryan’s chest, one of his feet softly dragging up and down Ryan’s shin, “I’m sorry.”

And, after everything, Ryan still finds himself frowning at the apology, and like all the times before, he still won’t accept it. 

“Gav, I never want you to apologize for choosing to forget, okay?” He begins, voice thick with the beginnings of sleep, but he forges on anyways, “It’s, and don’t argue with me because it is, partially my fault that you got Hanahaki in the first place, right? And without knowing what the outcome would be if you told me, you chose what you believed was the lesser evil.

“Gavin, there _was_ no right choice. Because, really, I could care less if you have all your memories of me or none of them at all. I’ll go through them all with you and help you remember if you absolutely want, but really, the only memories I want you to have are the ones where we’re together— however that is.”

“Ry—” Gavin chokes out, and Ryan can sense he’s on the verge of tears that he _prays to God_ are not sad ones, and squeezes him tighter to hopefully provide some more comfort. 

“Hm?” 

“I don’t want to forget you saying that, ever.”

_Holy Fuck_.

Ryan’s own heart squeezes at the implication of that statement, the desperate _hope_ in those words, the yearning for a single, solid truth in this pool of lies that Gavin’s been swimming in for God-only-knows-how long. 

And as he peers down and looks at the solid, real mass of Gavin draped and curled into his side, even after all the _hurt_ and _pain_ that Ryan’s inadvertently and indirectly caused him, he makes a promise as the night comes to a close. 

“You never will,” he asserts, so both Gavin and himself know it, “I promise.” 

⁑

And as Gavin falls asleep in the arms of the person who he literally loved so hard he was _killing_ himself, he dreams of thunderstorms and spring.

The flowers don’t scare him anymore, don’t _hurt_ him anymore. Because the flowers now grow _between_ them, not _in_ him, and the roots that once punctured his lungs form a foundation, and the petals that once choked him dance and something poetic in him decides to call it _growth_. 

And when his heart _blooms_ , and he realizes he can still breathe—that there’s no _pain_ —Gavin smiles in his sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i really bullshitted the last few pieces i had to write, because, well, _yknow_ , since it was the only thing I had left to touch up after the news, so i hope it’s not as lackluster as i think it is, but whatever. 
> 
> Again, I'm not exactly happy to have outputted more content including him when everyone is generally trying everything in their power to erase him, however i have never seen a hanahaki fic where the person has actually gotten the procedure done, _ever_ , and I guess it just **worked** for ah cuz thats just how it is, and really, no other fandom I know of _would_ have any situation where something like this could work aside from something like rt, so it was too good of a concept, in my heart, to let go to waste, even if it involved him. 
> 
> Obviously, i know realistically that i could have totally reworked it for any other ship in ah, but I’d already put 20,000 words towards these two, alongside gathering references and quotes and general characterizations and stuff, and before everything, the only two i shipped fanonically in ah _was_ these two, so. Whatever. 
> 
> In closing, I have no idea if anyone will end up reading this fic, but alas, farewell freewood, and thanks for giving me two years of content to enjoy. I will (and have) genuinely miss(ed) refreshing this tag daily, even if the real him will forever be soured for me. I will always cherish the fics here that i’ve read, and I’m glad to say that I was able to witness, read, smile, laugh, and cry to so many talented writers and inspiring works. I owe my growth in writing fic to you, so kudos to you all, and stay strong. It will get better, and I hope you all had an enjoyable, safe christmas—or whatever holiday you chose, or didn't choose, to celebrate, and I wish you all the best in the new year <3 


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